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3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
This was very different than anything that I've read previously; it's focused on the ugliness of Hollywood, a side that isn't often written about. I really enjoyed West's writing style!
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I did not like this book. but this was a great passage.
“All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs when they had enough. Finally that day came. They could draw a weekly income of ten or fifteen dollars. Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?
Once there, they discover that sunshine isn't enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don't know what to do with their time. They haven't the mental equipment for leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn't any ocean where most of them came from, but after you've seen one wave, you've seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a "holocaust of flame," as the newspapers put[…]”
I get the point of the book but I did not enjoy it. It’s supposed to be a reflection of society but this is a repressed male society.
“All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs when they had enough. Finally that day came. They could draw a weekly income of ten or fifteen dollars. Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?
Once there, they discover that sunshine isn't enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don't know what to do with their time. They haven't the mental equipment for leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn't any ocean where most of them came from, but after you've seen one wave, you've seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a "holocaust of flame," as the newspapers put[…]”
I get the point of the book but I did not enjoy it. It’s supposed to be a reflection of society but this is a repressed male society.
dark
funny
fast-paced
‘Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.'
I wasn’t really sure what to make of this novel. I felt I should love it. It depicts a troubled and grotesque underbelly of people living under the imposing shadow of glitz and falsehood that is Hollywood. It features an intemperate dwarf, an endlessly trampled-on sucker, a fake wannabe cowboy, a clown who can never quite tell whether he is acting or not, and all the down-and-out seediness I have come to love in movies showing the darker side of Hollywood, from Barton Fink to Mullholland Drive. Surely The Day of the Locust serves as one of the primary sources for so much art that I love. Yet, somehow, I couldn’t get into it. I wondered how much the fault was my own.
It has quite a meandering structure. The protagonist, Tod, has come to Hollywood to paint film sets. He is enamoured by Faye, an aspiring starlet who ‘could only love a handsome man and would only let a wealthy man love her.’ Tod is merely a ‘good-hearted man’. I had been expecting this to be a story of a troubled romance, but what follows from here is more a kind of flaneurship of Tod's through Faye’s various love affairs and rejections.
There are some great comic moments, and some wonderful descriptions, most of which tend to emphasise artifice. Tod has 'a two-dimensional face that a talented child might have drawn with a ruler and a compass.’ While Faye is still beautiful while angry, 'because her beauty was structural like a tree’s, not a quality of her mind or heart.’ But the individual moments of quality never quite come together into a satisfactory whole.
There are also moments where the dark and sordid moments feel gratuitous. Tod, for all his flaws and desperation, is the closest thing we have to a sympathetic character, an everyman protagonist, but at one point, when impatient with rejection from Faye, he wishes 'he had the courage to wait for her some night and hit her with a bottle and rape her.’ The narrative voice is not strong enough for us to judge whether this is being presented to us almost somehow proportionate and justifiable (or even if courage is meant without irony here), rather than as the reprehensible thing as it is.
Perhaps I would have enjoyed the novel more if my expectations had been more in line. Maybe a part of me was expecting, given the time it was written and its reputation for sordidness, for it to have a clear, driving mystery, or at least a clearer plot. Overall, however, I still felt it was worthwhile to read, if only for the pleasure of discovering the source of some tropes and aesthetics that have found their way into so many movies and books since.
I wasn’t really sure what to make of this novel. I felt I should love it. It depicts a troubled and grotesque underbelly of people living under the imposing shadow of glitz and falsehood that is Hollywood. It features an intemperate dwarf, an endlessly trampled-on sucker, a fake wannabe cowboy, a clown who can never quite tell whether he is acting or not, and all the down-and-out seediness I have come to love in movies showing the darker side of Hollywood, from Barton Fink to Mullholland Drive. Surely The Day of the Locust serves as one of the primary sources for so much art that I love. Yet, somehow, I couldn’t get into it. I wondered how much the fault was my own.
It has quite a meandering structure. The protagonist, Tod, has come to Hollywood to paint film sets. He is enamoured by Faye, an aspiring starlet who ‘could only love a handsome man and would only let a wealthy man love her.’ Tod is merely a ‘good-hearted man’. I had been expecting this to be a story of a troubled romance, but what follows from here is more a kind of flaneurship of Tod's through Faye’s various love affairs and rejections.
There are some great comic moments, and some wonderful descriptions, most of which tend to emphasise artifice. Tod has 'a two-dimensional face that a talented child might have drawn with a ruler and a compass.’ While Faye is still beautiful while angry, 'because her beauty was structural like a tree’s, not a quality of her mind or heart.’ But the individual moments of quality never quite come together into a satisfactory whole.
There are also moments where the dark and sordid moments feel gratuitous. Tod, for all his flaws and desperation, is the closest thing we have to a sympathetic character, an everyman protagonist, but at one point, when impatient with rejection from Faye, he wishes 'he had the courage to wait for her some night and hit her with a bottle and rape her.’ The narrative voice is not strong enough for us to judge whether this is being presented to us almost somehow proportionate and justifiable (or even if courage is meant without irony here), rather than as the reprehensible thing as it is.
Perhaps I would have enjoyed the novel more if my expectations had been more in line. Maybe a part of me was expecting, given the time it was written and its reputation for sordidness, for it to have a clear, driving mystery, or at least a clearer plot. Overall, however, I still felt it was worthwhile to read, if only for the pleasure of discovering the source of some tropes and aesthetics that have found their way into so many movies and books since.
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
challenging
dark
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
prose, metaphor, visuals
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
medium-paced
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Read solely for Homer Simpson because this novel is NOT KIND to my city!