The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 5 March 1998
by Nathanael West
This book is a classic of Hollywood literature, that often dark and satirical subgenre populated by such authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Didion and Aldous Huxley. Here, Nathanael West tells the story of characters on the fringe of the entertainment industry, Homer Simpson, Faye Greener, and Tod Hackett. The reader may be left a little flat by the spare prose West uses in his tale, remeniscent of noir fiction. The story is terse and biting. Each character has come to California seeking fame or health in the shining city, and each carries his own history of bitterness and dreams. The imagery West uses to illustrate the moral decay of this fringe population is sometimes disturbing, sometimes inspired, and occasionally presages events still decades into the future for Los Angeles. This reader was left looking for more depth to the characters, as well as left dreaming of the romance of Depression-era California.
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