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A review by graylodge_library
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
4.0
"Where else could they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?
Once there, they discover that sunshine isn’t enough.
They realize that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. The 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."
Empty and crumbling sets, weird architecture, starlets thirsting to be famous, religious fanatics, tired and sick artists, cockfighting, illusioned people, restless crowds, celebrity obsession, fake horses at the bottom of pools. Everything that made/makes Los Angeles so wonderfully bizarre or a dumpster fire, depending on your point of view. West's disjointed execution wasn't the best, but I keep coming to it, so there must be something there.
The movie is equally fascinating, perfectly capturing the grotesqueness and gloominess, and the final frenzied scene is incredible.