Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

"Day of the Locust" is a novel that I've always been meaning to read, and despite its short length never quite got around to. A novel about Hollywood, by one of American fiction's sharpest literary observers, it didn't disappoint, though it wasn't the novel I'd been expecting.

For in "Day of the Locust" published in 1939, this is not the Hollywood of the winners, but of the losers, the no hopers. The "hero" of the piece is Tod Hackett, a young artist who has been brought out to Hollywood to design scenes for the movies. He's by nature then an observer, rather than a major participant. In his own time he is painting a large nightmarish tableau of Los Angeles in flames. Set during the great depression, Hollywood is both a promised land and a chimera. It is the escapism for the masses, but also, for those who flock there, like a gold rush - full of promise, but with few benefiting by hitting a seam. Into this millieu Tod falls for the beautiful but talentless actress Faye, and through his pursuit of her, comes into contact with other characters - a cowboy extra, Earle, a dwarf, Abe, and Homer Simpson (!) a lonely man who has moved to Hollywood for his health and becomes embroiled with Faye's circle.

It is a dark, noirish book, that reminds one of Jim Thompson or other noir writers as much as Fitzgerald for instance. The difference with Fitzgerald is a telling one - for in his unfinished "The Last Tycoon" Fitzgerald, as always, is fascinated by power - the powers that make Hollywood happen; whilst West finds himself looking at the ordinary people, the joes with the unmet dreams. For this is a novel about Hollywood's dualism - the characters are all there because of the "Hollywood dream" but are clearly living it as nightmare. For the beautiful Faye, she is treading the boards on the way to some low level prostitution, sleeping with clients to pay off the costs of her father's funeral. Her father is an ex-clown who now sells polish door-to-door. Homer Simpson is living off - and lets Faye live off - his earnings from a scrupulous life as an accountant; he is incapable of becoming anything other than Faye's victim, the more he takes care of her, the more she despises him. She refuses to sleep with Tod because he is neither handsome or rich, so he tries to take revenge through fantasising about raping her. Everyone in West's Hollywood is dirtied and tainted by the town.

There's a brilliant scene where a wild party kicks off at where Faye is staying at Homer's. Earle and his Mexican friend are breeding fighting cocks, and Abe, the dwarf, and Tod's scriptwriter friend Claude want to see a cock fight. The cock fight is vividly portrayed, violent and bloody, and the blood lust that leads to the cock fight seems to feed into the atmosphere of this pivotal evening - where Simpson will see Faye's lies for what they are, and she will leave him - her future unknown, but predictably grim.

Unlike Faulkner and Fitzgerald who went to Hollywood as famous writers, West was an unknown, and his Hollywood career was hardly anymore illustrious - yet out of it came this great novel. It's style is a mix of the real and the impressionistic and it is the latter that makes the novel flow so effectively. The Hollywood of the dream and the nightmare come together at the end where there is a film premiere taking place, and crowds of people turn into a virtual riot in which the novel's characters get caught up in. The title - "Day of the Locust" - echoes the Biblical plagues, and it is this frantic final scene where it appears that Hollywood falls in on itself.

A fascinating and original novel that I'm glad I've finally got around to reading.