The Day of the Locust

What is one to do in the Windy City, on a rainy and miserably cold April day, when only last week spring - that flirtatious and treacherous harlot- let us have a peek under her titillating dress, standing a-la Marilyn Monroe on the subway vent, and letting golden rays of warmth wash over our chilled and winter-pale bodies, pushing the bubbling mercury way above the 70 degree mark, only to have her tug the garment back down with a brusque, businesslike movement, with her pretty head thrown back, eyes closed in a childish and petulant you-can’t-touch-this frown, and let the sleet and snow return on our despondent and defeated faces?
Well, one thing you can do is pick up a copy of Mr. Nathanael West’s classic tale of life in Hollywood in warm and sunny California, The Day of the Locust.

This good read was penned in 1939 and deals with a group of people living on the fringes of the American movie industry during the great depression.
But before we launch into this exquisitely told story of oddballs, soulless starlets and a whole cast of unsavory and shallow characters, I’d like to spend a paragraph or two cackling on about my weakness for good titles and the methodology behind my reading madness.
I love a good title. I am a sucker for them. And although I prefer the definite article-intriguing adjective-cool noun 1-2-3 punch, as in: The Human Stain, The Sheltering Sky, The Good Earth, The Daunting Douchenozzle and other classic calling cards for English literature, I was much drawn to the portentous and biblical-image evoking phrase; The Day of the Locust. I knew the book existed and had caught a glimpse of its reputation, but had I never heard of it before stumbling upon it on the dusty shelves of one of the second-hand bookstores I frequent, I would have purchased it for the title alone.
Needless to say that this strategy for selecting books isn’t guaranteed to send shockwaves of delight through your Clitterati Literati each and every time.

My selection process for candidates to be held in front of my Roman nose for several hours is fairly straightforward. I want to emphasize that I speak of Real Books here, as in real dead-tree residue and good old-fashioned ink.
Kunkle, Krinkle, Kindull, or whatever the name of that electronic abomination may be; to the pit with Thee, Demon!

I suppose the sheer volume of books on offer makes us all fastidious to some degree.
Were one shipwrecked and left alone on the proverbial island, even the discovery of a Dan Brown novel may bring about a euphoric reading experience, as it will be the only printed text to be read in the next 40 years before one succumbs to the combination of boredom, scurvy and the effects of excessive self-pleasuring (note: Swindle abusers caught in this predicament will find out after 3 days that having 10,000 stored stories doesn’t amount to Jack squat when your batteries have run out).
But if one has even a little choice in literati, Brown’s stories will immediately be recognized for the rancid stool water that they obviously are.
To guide me through the canyons filled with all those thousands upon thousands of books in our treasured English language alone, I found a trusted guide in a quite unlikely place; I use the Time Magazine list of best English novels published after 1923.
I scan the listing, take a quick look at the subject, and unless the book deals with a matter I really don’t care for, like sports or anything post-modern, I put it on my list and look for it the next time I skulk my way through the narrow aisles of Chicago’s used-bookstores.
I almost always buy my books second hand, not just because of the monetary incentive, but because I love everything about old books; their smell, the different fonts on the covers, the way the cloth covers feel against my palms, the lovely ochre color at the edges of the pages, contrasting with the pristine white in the center.
Hah ! Kindle, my tuchus! I stand erect on the barricades of tradition, the spirit of Gutenberg to my left and that fractious Frenchman General Pétain on my right, and in unison we bellow as we stare down the gathering swarm of electronic pixel vampires who besiege our literary Verdun: ” Ils ne passeront pas !”

But enough of this falderal, and on with the review.

Locust tells the story of Tod Hackett, a set-designer/painter who’s been lured to Hollywood, but who winds up being disillusioned by the people he meets in Tinseltown. Now, the trope of the shallow, desperate, empty-headed, starstruck Hollywood wannabes is indeed a familiar one, but West’s unflinching eye and first-rate dissection of human character, presented in terse, clear prose, exposes a dystopia not only devoid of true human worth and achievement, but one rife with viciousness and cruelty rising from the boredom and emptiness the émigrés to California experience after they find that the dream of a lifetime doesn’t deliver.

Tod’s acquaintances exist at the periphery of the illusion of Hollywood, and none of them go anywhere.
The storyline seems somewhat fragmented as we see Tod interact with some very well-described characters, but there isn’t much dramatic plot development, save the climactic final scene.
The structure of the story, or lack of it, reminded me a bit of Steinbeck’s style in Cannery Row.
A writer can only get away with this loose a story when the reader is fascinated by the characters and wishes to see what will happen to them even though none of them are particularly sympathetic and none of them will get what they want.
And, Jesus be praised, there are actually a few very funny moments in this otherwise brutally honest and sobering novel. For instance: an Inuit family, brought to Hollywood to be extras in a movie, confuses a funeral for a movie-set, with hilarious results.

The title of this book works very well, and it looms over the entire story from beginning to end.
Some deranged critic opined that the locusts are a reference to the rising fascism in Europe at the time.
As the saying goes; one has to be very well read to be this wrong.
The locusts are the seekers of a false dream, whose bitterness morphs into an insatiable appetite for ever more spectacular and violent diversions. In the case of the adorers of Hollywood royalty, this manifests itself into motion picture escapism, but the greatness of The Day of the Locust is that it constitutes a searing indictment of not only Hollywood, but of our entire entertainment culture and the trivial and meaningless icons we erect for ourselves, with all the detrimental effects this has on our humanity.

I have lived in California for a decade, including a two year stint in Southern California, and it is amazing how this 70-year-old story still accurately describes the lunacy, the vapid trend-seeking and cultural vacuity of modern-day Los Angeles.
Sarah Vowell, who is very funny, once observed that California is the worst place to be sad in. And she’s right. One has no excuse to be miserable in all that sun-drenched, natural beauty and there isn’t a season with clouds and rain in which a person can properly feel sad.
Perhaps for such as I, who almost got lost themselves in the Californian wasteland, this novel is more poignant than it will be for readers who haven’t lived in Southern California, but my hunch is that you will enjoy Nathanael’s superb creation.

The Frittati council awards this stunning piece of fiction with no less than 8 Wafting Winona’s and 1 Adorable Aniston to boot.
You will be distressed to know that I’ve set myself to the writing of a short story, and I have chosen as my subjects the classic Shakespearean themes of murder, cocaine and teenage prostitution. Developments will come your way as the plot thickens.

In the meantime, a la semaine prochaine, mes amis Literati, and if you have been wondering (as you bloody well should) what exactly is rotten in the state of Denmark;
well, it is the cheese.