November's book

#14, The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

I read this novel in college, for a different class.

A complicated look at Hollywood and the burgeoning of 20th, now 21st century culture. The story focuses on a group of people with aspirations in Hollywood,and the failure of most of them to make it on any level, including interpersonal relationships.

It is a bleak, fearsome novel about desire, gratification, superficiality, and desperation. I remember being strongly affected by it, esepcially because I have always loved movies from the 1030s and 1940s, where West sets his story. But the pretty images are just that: pretty images.