» Another ‘Day’
New Directions has just reissued Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, one of the Big 3 novels written about Los Angeles and published in 1939 (the other two being Ask the Dust and The Big Sleep). Richard Rayner in the Los Angeles Times has some background on the writing of the book.
Los Angeles has been the subject of, and setting for, many fine novels, yet The Day of the Locust still feels like the single best-achieved, and most oracular, piece of fiction the city has inspired. West wanted to show the dump behind the dream, and he did it in spades; but he proved too that L.A. could be the seedbed of high art.Personally, I think Ask the Dust is a superior book, but the case can be made for Day of the Locust, and the rest is certainly true.
