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3.36 AVERAGE
3.36 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Prescient:
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 it. But the planes never crash.
Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. Their daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.
1930s Hollywood, Tod Hackett falls in love with a beautiful aspiring actress who has no talent.
Befriends D list players of the Hollywood scene and a former accountant who has no control over his hands.
This book is just different people dealing with failure and disappointment.
I found it dry and forgettable, but enjoyable in the moment
Befriends D list players of the Hollywood scene and a former accountant who has no control over his hands.
This book is just different people dealing with failure and disappointment.
I found it dry and forgettable, but enjoyable in the moment
What a weird short novel. It's Depression-era Los Angeles, but it could be here and now (right at the beginning West says something along the lines of "everyone's wearing sport clothes, but not for doing sports"...).
Every single character is disturbed and disturbing. The theme appears to be the intersection of imaginary and actual violence (human-on-human, chicken-on-chicken, human-on-chicken, etc.). In some ways it's as dark as it sounds, but it's also quite stylized. Personally I found it difficult to get past the name Homer Simpson.
Every single character is disturbed and disturbing. The theme appears to be the intersection of imaginary and actual violence (human-on-human, chicken-on-chicken, human-on-chicken, etc.). In some ways it's as dark as it sounds, but it's also quite stylized. Personally I found it difficult to get past the name Homer Simpson.
As conceptually interesting as Miss Lonelyhearts, a clever diagnosis of some of the social ills plaguing (as in locust, geddit?) American culture. Faye Greener is the Hollywood starlet/harlot, but I think the diagnosis is still pertinent in the age of pornography: she has an essentially parasocial clique of disaffected voyeurs, although their desired object doesn't really exist anyway.
What a strange fact of our timeline that Homer Simpson, according to Matt Groening in 2012, got his name partly from one of the characters in this novel, a pathetic, perverted, creepy old man, although I disagree with Groening's assessment of him as merely a "minor" character in the novel. He is very much the central figure other than Tod, because he is the most outcast. A cruel but amusing irony that the later series of the Simpsons have begun to embody the very meretriciousness of American popular culture that was so distasteful to West.
Few artists approach West's delicious takes on bitterness and resentment particularly of American young men except maybe Gaddis (and, if it's not too strange to bring in here, Joker (2019), which has a similarly apocalyptic vision of the future of the US). Possibly premonitions of The Recognitions in the choice of a voyeuristic, detached artist as its protagonist. Bach seems to have affected both Gaddis and West deeply, I suppose it's partly because Bach and baroque music is so opposite to the superficiality of American culture in the 20th century.
The imagined rape scene (and misogyny?) might not be to current tastes but I think this darker aspect of masculine nature and sexuality is an important psychology to probe, and not merely ignore or demonise. Disaffected, low status men can be a very ugly but also dangerous side of society. Society (we live in a) ignores them to its own peril. West very correctly identified the dangers of fascism as an outlet for such groups, and no surprise that the same issue raises itself again in this century.
What a strange fact of our timeline that Homer Simpson, according to Matt Groening in 2012, got his name partly from one of the characters in this novel, a pathetic, perverted, creepy old man, although I disagree with Groening's assessment of him as merely a "minor" character in the novel. He is very much the central figure other than Tod, because he is the most outcast. A cruel but amusing irony that the later series of the Simpsons have begun to embody the very meretriciousness of American popular culture that was so distasteful to West.
Few artists approach West's delicious takes on bitterness and resentment particularly of American young men except maybe Gaddis (and, if it's not too strange to bring in here, Joker (2019), which has a similarly apocalyptic vision of the future of the US). Possibly premonitions of The Recognitions in the choice of a voyeuristic, detached artist as its protagonist. Bach seems to have affected both Gaddis and West deeply, I suppose it's partly because Bach and baroque music is so opposite to the superficiality of American culture in the 20th century.
The imagined rape scene (and misogyny?) might not be to current tastes but I think this darker aspect of masculine nature and sexuality is an important psychology to probe, and not merely ignore or demonise. Disaffected, low status men can be a very ugly but also dangerous side of society. Society (we live in a) ignores them to its own peril. West very correctly identified the dangers of fascism as an outlet for such groups, and no surprise that the same issue raises itself again in this century.
fast-paced
I've read quite a few other books set in Hollywood, and despite being from 1939, it's pretty much the same story, chronicling the various characters' sad and inane lives. It wasn't particularly different than other books I've read, but maybe it was one of the firsts of its type. Entertaining enough, and definitely a fast read.
dark
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A plague book club pick that isn't explicitly to do with plagues but certainly tied in with our previous book on avian flu. That cockfight scene! Ack! Disconcerting to see much of the same imagery from The Fatal Strain again here. Ick ick ick.
But I suggested this book because of a mention in an article on fire, something on all our minds lately: https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/
Did I like it? I'm not even sure. I listened to it twice, the first time letting the words flow over me like a fever dream, the second time with much more focus. It's something that holds my attention since I was so willing to revisit it immediately, but it's mostly rather unpleasant. But is that bad? No, it's beautiful written, utterly pessimistic, and good to read during intense moments of nihilism. Give it a go, now is definitely the time.
But I suggested this book because of a mention in an article on fire, something on all our minds lately: https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/
Did I like it? I'm not even sure. I listened to it twice, the first time letting the words flow over me like a fever dream, the second time with much more focus. It's something that holds my attention since I was so willing to revisit it immediately, but it's mostly rather unpleasant. But is that bad? No, it's beautiful written, utterly pessimistic, and good to read during intense moments of nihilism. Give it a go, now is definitely the time.
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
fast-paced