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Rating: 
Summary: A literary Molotov cocktail
Review: "The Day of the Locust" is about the strange, disparate people that invariably get drawn to Los Angeles in the 1930's, a time when studios put out assembly-line low-budget movies and employed revolving crews of extras, writers, and various technicians. The novel seems influenced by Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" in its portrayal of "grotesques," emotionally or behaviorally defective people on the fringe of society, but its tone is much more vibrant and frenetic; if "Winesburg, Ohio" is a petting zoo, "The Day of the Locust" is a three-ring circus. At the center of the action is an artist and scene designer named Tod Hackett. He observes southern California with a sort of concerned detachment; he sees it as a wasteland of incongruous, tacky architecture and rootless people who come here to die. His discontent is manifested in his extracurricular plan to paint a canvas called "The Burning of Los Angeles." Even though Tod may be considered the main character, he's the least interesting member of the cast; he's like the "straight man" in a comedy team. He's in love with an aspiring actress and occasional prostitute named Faye Greener who likes to use men. She has managed to hook a shy, lonely unemployed hotel bookkeeper named Homer Simpson (!) who moved to L.A. from Iowa for his health. Homer has compulsively fidgety hands and occasionally even exhibits the simplemindedness of his bald, mustard-colored cartoon namesake. Faye is also attracted to a lanky cowboy named Earle Shoop who works in a Sunset Boulevard saddlery store, does occasional movie work, and doesn't seem to know he's a caricature. There is a cavalcade of other colorful characters, including Faye's father Harry, an ex-vaudeville clown who is now peddling silver polish door-to-door; Abe Kusich, a drunken dwarf; Claude Estee, a successful screenwriter who has a rubber sculpture of dead horse in his swimming pool; Joan Schwartzen, a loud, lewd harridan, who is probably Phyllis Diller's progenitor; Miguel, Earle's chicken-tending Mexican friend; and last but not least, Adore Loomis, an obnoxious aspiring kid star. The novel focuses on the lives of these fringe characters rather than moviemaking, which allows West to demonstrate that he excels at writing unusual, difficult scenes -- a screening of a porn flick, a cockfight, a riot at a movie premiere. The inventiveness, energy, and attitude here cannot be overstated; never have I read a novel that delights so much in pathetic human oddity, in mixing its characters into a violent Molotov cocktail and observing the comical results with jubilation.
Rating: 
Summary: A Hodgepodge of unique characters and situations
Review: Ah, a book with cockfights, a true cowboy in LA, and the original Homer Simpson. This book, while not overtly outrageous, it shows scenes of the eccentric life of a few fringe people in Hollywood. Throughout this book, unique characters are introduced and their lives are showed in the most interesting ways. From a lonely man who takes in a woman, to the woman who ruthlessly takes advantage of him, to the woman's father, who tirelessly wants to entertain. A mix of failures, this book portrays a truer Hollywood, where success and glamour are very limited, but where mental diversity is everywhere. While it does do a good job of showing people and situations, the sentence structure is not too fluid. Sometimes a paragraph or two may have to be re-read. Also, this book does not have much cohesiveness to it. With no plot, and no central theme, the book drifts from one scene to the next. Because of this, it's very hard to be captivated. By all means, this is not a page-turner. For those interested in books about people, I would recommend this book. For those looking for insight or story, I would suggest passing up this book.
Rating:
Summary: Great book!!
Review: Although this book left me quite depressed after my first read through, it still is one of the best books I ever read. His description of his characters pain is so vivid that it touches you inside. Shows how society can corrupt even the best persons.
Rating:
Summary: This gem of a book speaks volumes about Los Angeles
Review: In this wonderfully crafted mini-novel, Nathanael West captures the cultural essence of boomtown Los Angeles during its tumultuous adolescence. The dark, coarse, seamy side of the "California dream" is vividly portrayed here. The plot is not really the point in this period piece; the truth is in the characters and their always unfortunate interactions. For those who seek to understand the social history of southern California, this novel might be more useful than a half-dozen academic treatises.
Rating:
Summary: Loony Tunes In Tinseltown
Review: Short and easy to read novel depicting the fringes of society. The characters are all misfits and hanger-on's seeking miraculous cures from their failings by basking in the sunshine and glitz of Hollywood. The most beleivable character is an untalented actress and part time prostitute who drives men insane. The story seemed a bit unreal to me but then so is Hollywood.
Rating:
Summary: like "less than zero" in the thirties
Review: Some of the depravities of Hollywood and LA depicted here seem slightly quaint today (now that the area has had sixty years to surpass West's vision), but this book still hits the mark with a remarkable frequency. When West is writing at his best he functions as a baleful documentor of what would grow into the LA we all know and love. Cults, pseudoreligions, celebrity-worship, crowds, riots, child actors, hodgepodge architecture, and an industry dedicated to the falsification of reality: all of them are here, and West's writing on these afflictions still retains force today. Ultimately, West sees LA as an environment in which no human goodness can survive-a kind of moral black hole-and this is certainly reflected in the novel's array of characters, who are largely a batch of self-centered xenophobes. Even Tod, ostensibly the novel's "hero," tries (more than once) to summon up the courage to simply rape Faye. In other words, this book won't be a big hit with people who use "I didn't like any of the characters" as a criticism: a shame, because there's a reasonably good study of human desperation to be found here, and West's focus on how certain environments and cultures exacerbate that desperation is still profoundly relevant to our own day. A quick read, not very difficult, dense, or lyrical, but a fine addition to the "literature" on LA.
Rating:
Summary: Characters on the fringe of 30's Hollywood
Review: The movie industry is the draw and an incredibly odd collection of characters find themselves living marginalized lives in the shadow of early Hollywood. Their lives interact in a series of bizarre scenes fueled primarily by lust for the one female character who is completely self-absorbed and has somehow transformed the attention from men she encounters into her own fanasy version of celebrity.
There is a dark undertone of violence that finally erupts in a random and surprising way that sems to be a rebellion against the perversion of reality that Hollywood represents.
Not a great book..but a memorable one.
Rating:
Summary: try Miss Lonelyhearts instead
Review: This book is often called the best book ever written about Hollywood. It is the story of set designer Tod Hackett & a cast of lowlifes living on the fringe of the movie business, all of them drawn to the same wannabe starlet. The characters are uniformly unsympathetic & it is nearly impossible to care what happens to them. Perhaps the book was more shocking when we knew less about the movie business & the personal lives of entertainers, but this tale of the dross behind the Silver Screen leaves one unmoved today. GRADE: C-
Rating:
Summary: Its a mad, mad, mad, mad Hollywood
Review: West makes a successful attempt to show the reality of Hollywood instead of the sugarcoated glamour usually permeated by the media. But is it the reality? Or is it just the perspective of a disillusioned writer? We will never know for sure, but us humans tend to take tragedy as more tangible than fantasy so it sure seems real. What makes this dark uncensored view even more shocking is the fact that it was written in the 1930s, when Hollywood glitz was supposed to be in its heyday. People were still jaded back then as they are now. West has a knack for character psychology, especially when showing how pathetic and desperate humans can be. I recommend Day of the Locusts mainly for that reason; you will find characters who want someone who wants someone else, the desperate young aspiring actress who is not yet corrupted but very soon will be, the stoic midwestern man who is out of his depths in the lies and games of Hollywood folk, the ordinary people around Hollywood just waiting for their chance with a rabid intensity, and the artist-narrator's who invisions all the madness around him as an apocalypse that will end in the "Burning of Los Angeles". I promise some characters in this book will make an indelible impression on you.
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