Miss Lonelyhearts (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Nathanael West
- First Published: 1933
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social satire
- Time of Work: Late 1920’s
- Setting: New York City
- Genres: Long fiction, Satire
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Love or romance, New York City, 1920’s, Letter writing, Loneliness, Newspapers, Satire
- Locales: New York, NY
Characters Discussed
Miss Lonelyhearts, the male writer of advice to the lovelorn on the New York Post-Dispatch. The lovelorn column, considered a necessity for the increase in the paper’s circulation and regarded by its staff as a joke, becomes an agony to its writer as he sees that the letters he receives are genuine cries for help from the very depths of suffering. In an attempt to escape the pain of the realization that he is the victim of the joke rather than its perpetrator, he turns in vain to drink, to lovemaking, and to a vacation in the country with a woman...
[The entire page is 611 words long]
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