in praise of Nathanael West

[themirrorthief]

I am reading Day of the Locust by this guy and it is amazing.  I just picked it up at a thrift store and I had never heard of the guy before.  His prose is so beautiful.  I recommend this book to anyone.  Its about Hollywood, not the stars but people on the fringe.  Reading this I recognized people in my own life, the shady lady, the cockfighter, the drunken midgett, the dying comedian...they are all there.  Even myself is in there.  What an incredible talent this guy was.  And weirdly, something about his writing reminded me of Jackson Pollock.  Anyhow, if you want to enrich your reading experience you check him out.  He died very young and violently like Howard.  There was just something about those times that created mind boggling writing talent.  They did a lot more deep thinking back before tv came along to numb our brains.  IMO   He inspired me to write  in a more meaningful way if possible.

And he inspired me to read in a more meaningful way.