The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

When the shortlist for this round of book club came up, I picked The Day of the Locust because it's been lauded as one of the best novels of the 20th century, and even had blurbs from author Nathanael West's contemporaries, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Malcolm Cowley. So I figured that with the lavish praise and the book's 1930s Hollywood setting, it would be somewhat Fitzgeraldesque.

Not so much. It's really more of a novella than a full novel, and an underdeveloped one at that. It's the story of Tod Hackett, an artist-cum-set-painter who moves to Los Angeles for the same reasons presumably everyone else did in the 30s: to trade the hardship and tedium of Depression-era America for something more exciting and glamorous. West's Hollywood is filled with people who have "come here to die," and Tod is fascinated by the quiet, insistent subclass that has popped up--the extras, crew members, and various hangers-on who fill out the movie industry. So between the actual scenery and the human scenery, Tod is kept pretty busy with an unofficial "artistic" study of it all. (He doesn't seem to notice or care that he's one of them as well.)

But of course there's a girl, too. He falls in lust with one of his neighbors, the beautiful movie extra Faye Greener, who wants to be an It Girl. But Faye doesn't seem to have much working for her on that front, except a vague idea that she needs to be a star, and a knack for making men act like idiots in her presence. She manages to hook Tod, a hapless Midwestern dude named Homer Simpson (seriously!), and a couple of cowboy types who basically stand around doing nothing until there's a movie that needs, well, cowboy types. Faye flirts, teases, and manipulates her way through the group of men, getting what she needs for herself and her aging showbiz father. And the guys all put up with it--paying for cuckolded dates, jockeying for her attention, buying her things. The only one who's close to a decent human being is Homer 'cause he's sweet and clueless, and even he's on the far end of the "acceptable" spectrum. And if there's any point that the book approaches Fitzgeraldism, it's in the fact that none of the characters are especially likeable--but here, there's no amazing prose to back that up, or an especially compelling plot.

The plot feels episodic and a little random. The only real common thread is violence: in the book there's a subtext-heavy cockfight, an actual fight among Faye's suitors, a fight with a little person, a fight with a child, forced sex...you name the brutality, it's in here somewhere. And for all of the emphasis on Tod's chronicling all of this for his art, you don't actually get to see much of that happen. And after a few carefully thematic scenes, including a riot at a movie premiere, West relies on very little else to convey meaning and relevance.

And I think it's a shame, because this novella could have been so much better as a standalone work if it had just been fleshed out, and not reliant on the ennui/inertia of the characters to get the major points made.

Oh, well--not the favorite book club book (on either of our parts, unless Jacob has had a major revelation since last night), but at least it was brief. On to the next one! And to The Great Gatsby, because I realized that I would have been much happier doing the semi-annual reread.