dellaposta 's review for:

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

4.5

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West is a vivid, cutting writer. The novel is both absurdly funny and viscerally disturbing. He portrays Hollywood like an evil force-field that distorts the identities of all who enter it. Any true sense of self gets subsumed into a vulgar performance of self. In the absurd pursuit of individual fame and recognition, life’s losers instead become anonymous faces in a murderous, soulless mob.