The Day of the Locust

Admired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Dashiell Hammett, and hailed as one of the best one hundred English-language novels by Time magazine, The Day of the Locust continues to influence American writers, artists, and culture. Bob Dylan wrote the classic song Day of the Locusts in homage, and Matt Groening's Homer Simpson is named after one of its characters. No novel more perfectly captures the nuttier side of Hollywood. Here the lens is turned on its fringes-actors out of work, film extras with big dreams, and parents lining their children up for small roles. But it's the bit actress Faye Greener who steals the spotlight with her wildly convoluted dreams of stardom: I'm going to be a star some day-if I'm not I'll commit suicide.

“"West's Day of the Locust , a sun-blazed Polaroid of its time, seems permanently oracular."”

It's brilliant, savage, and arresting-a truly good novel.

-- "Dorothy Parker"

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 piece of fiction the city has inspired.

-- "Los Angeles Times"

This is the Hollywood that needs telling about. It's a fine job. I got a kick out of it.

-- "Dashiell Hammett"

West's Day of the Locust, a sun-blazed Polaroid of its time, seems permanently oracular.

-- "Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn"

Nathanael West (1903-1940)-novelist, screenwriter, playwright-was one of the most gifted and original writers of his generation, a comic artist whose insight into the brutalities of modern life would prove prophetic. He is famous for two masterpieces, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust. He died in a car crash in 1940, while returning to Los Angeles to attend the funeral of his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald.Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over eight hundred titles to his credit. Named one of the Best Voices of the Century and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.

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