Best Selling Books by Nathanael West

The great Hollywood novel is now available as a stand-alone New Directions edition Admired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Dashiell Hammett, and hailed as one of the “Best 100 English-language novels” by Time magazine, The Day of the Locust continues to influence American writers, artists, and culture. Bob Dylan wrote the classic song “Day of the Locusts” in homage and Matt Groening’s Homer Simpson is named after one of its characters. No novel more perfectly captures the nuttier side of Hollywood. Here the lens is turned on its fringes — actors out of work, film extras with big dreams, and parents lining their children up for small roles. But it’s the bit actress Faye Greener who steals the spotlight with her wildly convoluted dreams of stardom: “I’m going to be a star some day—if I’m not I’ll commit suicide.”

Nathanael West, originally named Nathan Weinstein, (1903 – 1940), was an American writer, primarily known for his satirical novels of the 1930s. His best-known works are "The Day of the Locust" and "Miss Lonelyhearts." Published in 1939, " The Day of the Locust" is a novel about the mythologies of Hollywood and the "American Dream." Enigmatic and disconcerting, this work narrates the experience of a set designer in a semi-hallucinatory and artificial Los Angeles (itself resembling a movie set), inhabited by a parade of eccentric characters and a crowd bewitched by the magic of cinema and promises of abundance and happiness. Both apocalyptic and moving, violent and absurdly comic, " The Day of the Locust" is, in the opinion of many, the best novel ever written about Hollywood.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Miss Lonelyhearts" by Nathanael West. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Two classic short stories, one about a male reporter who writes an advice column, and the other, about people who have migrated to California in expectation of health and ease.

Welcome to the Essential Novelists book series, were we present to you the best works of remarkable authors. For this book, the literary critic August Nemo has chosen the two most important and meaningful novels of Nathanael West wich are Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust. Nathanael West was an American writer best known for satiric novels of the 1930s. West saw the American dream as having been betrayed, both spiritually and materially, and in his writing he presented "a sweeping rejection of political causes, religious faith, artistic redemption and romantic love". This idea of the corrupt American dream endured long after his death, in the form of the term "West''s disease", coined by the poet W. H. Auden to refer to poverty that exists in both a spiritual and economic sense. Novels selected for this book: - Miss Lonelyhearts. - The Day of the Locust.This is one of many books in the series Essential Novelists. If you liked this book, look for the other titles in the series, we are sure you will like some of the authors.

Tod Hackett is a brilliant young artist - and a man in danger of losing his heart. Brought to an LA studio as a set-designer, he is soon caught up in a fantasy world where the cult of celebrity rules. But when he becomes besotted by the beautiful Faye, an aspiring actress and occasional call-girl, his dream rapidly becomes a nightmare. For, with little in the way of looks and no money to buy her time, Tod''s desperate passion can only lead to frustration, disillusionment and rage ...

Nathanael West was only thirty-seven when he died in 1940, but his depictions of the sometimes comic, sometimes horrifying aspects of the American scene rival those of William Faulkner and Flannery O''Connor. A Cool Million, written in 1934, is a satiric Horatio Alger story set in the midst of the Depression. The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931) was described by one critic as "a fantasy about some rather scatological adventures of the hero in the innards of the Trojan horse."

"In The Day of the Locust a young artist, Tod Hackett, arrives in LA full of dreams. But celebrity and artifice rule and he soon joins the ranks of the disenchanted that drift around the fringes of Hollywood. When he meets Faye Greener, an aspiring actress, he is intoxicated and his desperate passion explodes into rage... The edition also includes the off-kilter, darkly comic tale Miss Lonelyhearts"--page [4] of cover.

In "A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin," Nathanael West employs a satirical and sharp prose style to explore the disillusionment of the American Dream during the Great Depression. Through the misadventures of Lemuel Pitkin, a naive and optimistic protagonist, West dismantles the myths of success and the capitalist ethos that underpin them. This novella, rich with dark humor and irony, situates itself within the literary context of the 1930s, reflecting the anxieties and social critiques prevalent in the Works Progress Administration''s artistic output while drawing parallels to contemporaneous literary movements like modernism and social realism. Nathanael West, born in 1903 to a Jewish family in New York City, faced the turmoil of the American socio-economic landscape firsthand. His experiences in Hollywood and his exposure to the artistic avant-garde influenced his worldview and literary craft. West''s keen observations about society''s underbelly and the fragility of individual aspirations culminate in this novel, making it a profound commentary on American identity and ambition. "A Cool Million" is a must-read for those interested in American literature, social critique, and the intricate interplay between hope and despair in the pursuit of the American Dream. West''Äôs incisive storytelling will engage readers while prompting them to reflect on the myths surrounding success and the often harsh realities that dismantle them.

Two short novels, one set in New York and the other in Hollywood, dramatically depict the extremes of the human condition and the destructive forces pervading modern American life