Variety
"The Truly Monstrous":
A Note on Nathanael West
MR.
CYRIL CoNNOLLY in his es-
say, "The Novel-Addict's
Cupboard," mentions a class of
novels "that one feels are little
known or underrated, that are
never followed by a successor, or
whose effect on people is unpredict–
able and subversive." Among them
he lists Nathanael West's
Miss
Lonelyhearts,
a "defiant master–
piece of futility." Although New Di–
rections has recently re-issued
Miss
Lonelyhearts,
it still belongs to the
category of "neglected books." A
small group of West devotees con–
tinues to cherish the novel and the
memory of its author, but it has
neither been popular among those
who enjoy bad novels nor known
to enough people who like good
ones. Mr. Alfred Kazin does not
mention West's name in his study
of recent American literature; he
can't be located in Fred B. Millett's
Contemporary American Authors.
In preparing this note I have found
practically no critical treatment of
West save for a handful of reviews,
most of them hurried and inade–
quate. Only one critic, Edmund
Wilson, has dealt with West at
length
(The Boys in the Back
Room)
,
recognizing his strange and
remarkable talent.
When Nathanael West died after
an automobile accident in 1940 he
was thirty-two years old. Aside f;om
the fact that he was married to
Eileen McKenney, lived in Holly–
wood after 1935, and wrote screen
plays
(I Stole a Million, Born to
be Wed, Men Against the Sky,etc. )
I have been able to discover only
the following information about his
life.
He was born Nathan Wallenstein
Weinstein. He graduated from
Brown University in 1924. The col–
lege yearbook described "Pep" at
this time as "an easygoing, genial
fellow" who introduced his class–
mates to
Jurgen
and "passed his
time in drawing exotic pictures" or
"quoting strange and fanciful poe–
try." I do not know what he did
after graduation, but some time
during this period
he
worked as a
manager of a residential hotel. His
first novel,
The Dream Life of
Balso Snell
(Contact Editions), was
published in 1931 and
Miss Lone–
l'}·hearts
two years later.
A Cool
Million
(
Covici-Friede, 1934)–
dedicated to his brother-in-law S.
J.
Perelman, whom he had known
at Brown-followed, and his last
novel,
The Day of the Locust
(Random House), appeared a year
before his death, in 1939.
In August of 1933, during the
interval between the publication of
