The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

Unfortunately, this book's write-up is getting a bit of the shaft, as I'm extremely tired and have read almost three books since finishing this one. Better late than never - just wait until I reread this for a proper write-up.

In trying to describe the feeling of this book, I kept coming back to one adjective: seething.

This book was an example of "apocalyptic California literature" in my geography class junior year of college (oh, UC Berkeley), and I had heard this sentiment echoed for some time before that. The reviews and blurbs all point to the violence, the growing push toward implosion, and so forth, unraveling within Hollywood.

The brilliant thing about Locust is that you don't notice this violence at first. The story opens with a frantic cavalry and mob, but it's on a movie set. The violence is simulated and practically comical. Slowly, as the novel goes on, the violence gets closer and closer to home.

By the time West gets to the impromptu cock fight in Faye's garage, your stomach should probably be starting to turn. What's really interesting is that the gut wrenching aspect of the violence, of the whole scene, isn't its brutality or its realism, but how unreal everything seems, and how casual the participants are in the face of blood and death.

The calmness with which everyone absorbs absurdity, blood, violence, sex, and a general human facade might be taken for granted, but you can imagine that Tod is not the only one having a strong emotional reaction to his surroundings, and that everyone involved is, in some way, seething just below the surface.

Faye is our protagonist's obsession, and like any proper obsession she arouses both desire and hatred. Tod is drawn to her, but is also constantly aware of how much she is an actress in daily life. Her very gestures are rehearsed and calculated movements - they excite him, but he knows his excitement has been manipulated by her, which makes him resent both Faye and himself.

Wow, the parallels with sentimental Hollywood! You are brought to tear by the latest schmaltz-fest, but only because it knows exactly what buttons to push, and wouldn't you (shouldn't you?) feel vulnerable and resentful about something so artificial and designed and un-human being able to move you? It reminds us of our pathetic emotionality, and Faye reminds Tod of his pathetic lust.

I will warn you, if you plan to read this book, please start dissociating a fat yellow animated character from the name Homer Simpson right . . . NOW. Otherwise, you may be unable to concentrate on the character of the same name in this book. He, too, gets bound up with Faye, but in a different way. Tod and Homer have a strange rivalry bond over Faye, and it's actually Homer that Tod is attempting to rescue, or at least reach, in the classic final chapter.

Throughout the book, Tod envisions a drawing of the burning of L.A., and as frantic, horrible, and outright apocalyptic as this drawing is described, it has nothing on what Hollywood actually is, already. Madness finally breaks free at the end of the book, the seething finally explodes in one scream, one big final gust of complicated emotion. His drawing does not come true, as you might expect when you first hear it mentioned. Instead, there is a version of the end of the world already present, at a movie premiere.

In West's Hollywood, in the thirties, we had already reached the end of the rope of human sanity. Things were already starting to crumble. At this point, shouldn't we all be screaming? And why aren't we? Because we're seething instead.

Great book. Also an excellent pairing with Miss Lonelyhearts, juxtaposing West's ability to provide us with outwardly emotional and genuinely good-hearted characters and more inwardly-focused and morally ambiguous characters.