West, Nathanael. (1903 - 1940).

L i f e

- born Nathan Weinstein, son of Lithuanian-Jewish parents, later adopted the half-biblical and half-American name Nathanael West

- divided between the two worlds without belonging anywhere really: his country of origin x America => became a poser and a fashionable cynic

- felt the discrepancy between the American dream x the American reality

W o r k

- a skilful and speedy scriptwriter, author of four grotesque novels

The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931):

- a surrealist parody on pseudo-art

- a would-be-poet’s pilgrimage in the digestive tract of the Troyan horse: gets inside through the anal orifice of the horse and meets various characters developing literary activities

- the Troyan horse = a symbol of artificiality and pretentiousness

- the same for the characters: a writer of the biography of St. Flea living in Christ’s armpit, a schoolboy writing his own version of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and sexually longing for his teacher, etc.

- the language = a motif of artificiality, a parody of clichés

Miss Lonelyhearts (1933):

- a black farce on the Miss Lonelyhearts advice column in newspapers

- the American dream x the American reality during the Great Depression: the impossibility of achieving one’s dreams

- characters: symbolically dead, deprived of life, and resembling inanimate objects

- shrike = a bird imitating others birds’ voices to impale his food on thorns <=> Shrike = the character imitating and parodying)the language and dreams of Miss Lonelyhearts, as if impaling the Christian phrases of Miss Lonelyhearts on the thorns of his sardonic ridicule

- originally: Miss Lonelyheart’s sickness of the lying dreams he is creating x then: his true attempt to fit into his saviour role leading to tragedy

- language: a simple and reduced modern language

- the dark-mood vision behind the comedy <=> Mark Twain’s late novels

A Cool Million, or the Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin (1934):

- the danger of the American dream for those believing in it, the danger of the American optimism and innocence

- a political satire on the clichés and the emptiness of the American dream

- the protagonist = Lemuel Pitkin, a worthy and virtuous man bound to succeed according to the American dream x but: fails, loses his teeth, eye, thumb, leg, and hair, and ends up physically dismantled and shot to death while holding a public speech

= symbolically the physical dismantling of the American dream

- conclusion: a parade to commemorate the martyr’s death said to have died for the ideals of the parade holder

The Day of the Locust (1939):

- his own experience of the Hollywood periphery

- characters: stiff as dead corpses, making only mechanical movements

- conclusion: an apocalyptic destructive dance