West, Nathanael
West, Nathanael( 1903–40),pseudonym of Nathan Wallenstein Weinstein, New York author who, after graduation from Brown University (1924) and two years in Paris, returned to his native city to begin writing his bitter, macabre fiction, which attracted little notice in his time but great recognition from critics after his death. His first works were The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931), a scatological fantasy dwelling on human corruption; Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), a sad and bitter satire of a newspaperman enmeshed in the lives of the writers to his lovelorn column; and A Cool Million (1934), a fantastic travesty and savage attack on the Horatio Alger theme. Script writing in Hollywood gave West a sense of that community and business that led to his most significant novel, The Day of the Locust (1939), a grotesque depiction in surrealist style of the sham of the city and the pathological misfits who inhabit it. West, who was S.J....
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