Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West- An Essay

This examination shows him that he is the victim of the joke and not its perpetrator. But to what end does West construct these ragged, faintly demonic tableaux? For all of its genuine empathy, it is, after all, a book that undermines its potential redemptions with ruthless efficiency. It is a novel that scours rather than solves. His hard-boiled characters—Shrike, the hapless Betty, the Doyles, the old man in the comfort station, Miss Lonelyhearts above all—lurch most strongly towards an inky black Expressionism when they are confronted with the impossibility of belief, of sustaining myth.

Their conveyances for meaning—religion, language, money, sex, love, friendship—are all examined and indicted as variations on an inadequacy. But he reserves what is perhaps his most damning critique for art and the pursuit of Paterian beauty:. Tell them to keep their society whores and pressed duck with oranges. Reading the book again over the recent holiday, something I try to do once every couple of years, it was this relentless critical engagement that stood out most to me, a bone-white searchlight set squarely on an American betrayal.

I hesitate to offer this as evidence of some sort of falsely consoling dimension of Shrike; after all, much of his literary permanence lies in his refusal to buy into the easy moralizing of the Manichean.

He is a character forever burning away the categories we place him into. Beyond the scalpel precision of its prose, this, I think, is its lasting value. It is a lovely irony that what is, to my mind, the darkest book in American literature is also capable of creating its own peculiar glare: We are all Miss Lonelyhearts now, mainlining suffering, fear, and injustice from dozens of sources, digital and analog alike.

Shrike, and indeed West, I think, would likely advise a different approach. Not exactly; rather, a redeemer of savage intensity and unyielding ambiguity—in other words, as essential as ever. Just to get the idea across: She wrote in pitiful semi-literacy that the doctor told them another pregnancy would be the death of her. Her husband said okay--until they got home.

That's not much of a spoiler since it appears on p. Not only that, but the protagonist is a minister's son, already with a tendency toward hyperreligiosity. There are no boundaries. They know he's a male. Not only that, but his friends are hard-drinking, misogynistic, homophobic characters given to verbal and sometimes physical expression of those attitudes: At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end.

When they lost this belief, they lost everything. Money and fame meant nothing to them. They were not worldly men. These were hard-boiled times, but unlike detective stories described by that adjective, there's nary a hero in sight. If the protagonist is not quite part and parcel of the surrounding corruption, neither can he extricate himself from it. Not only that, but his supervisor is a cynical provocateur, egging him on.

Sometimes our antihero takes it out on those seeking succor. After all, is it not they who have put him in this position? The common wisdom is that this is an allegorical tragicomedy, but there was nothing funny about it. The author supposedly had communist leanings, so common in those pre-Stalinist times, that he kept from being explicit in his work.

I'm guessing he was writing between-the-lines, writing under the guise of allegory and comedy in order to speak out. These are not just allegorical figures. The author has gone quite a way toward making them people. And that's the answer, really, to the question I posed at the beginning of this review: To the extent there is humor, and if, once upon a time, it was dark, it's now sick humor. What service does Miss LH thinks he should perform for his supplicants? Sometimes he aims to tell them that by their suffering they are participating in divinity. But that trope won't hunt, so he's seeking a lock on a love that heals My edition included an afterword from the '60s by Stanley Edgar Hyman, a critic and contributor to The New Yorker who was well known at the time.

He explained the allegorical aspects in ways that were helpful without being interpretations with which one would necessarily agree now, for example, with a lot of Freudian analysis. He also contributed a lot of biographical material on the author, fuller but generally consistent with what I could find easily on the Internet and sometimes including aspects that wouldn't be considered politically correct now. If that afterword is available online, I couldn't find it. I may come back and enlarge this section later.

For now, suffice it to say that if F. Scott Fitzgerald died without knowing he'd later be considered great, so much the more so for Nathanael West. I once spent three years putting together a book of letters: It was emotionally draining, not just because I tried to tie them together with autobiographical material, but because of the letters themselves. At one point I had to go to a therapist to find out how I could keep writing fiction while being responsible and responsive to my readers.

I was so involved with a couple of kids I wanted to save them that the therapist had to teach me how to step back while still being there for them. Over the years there have been seven kids who started to write to me at age twelve--kids with tough lives--who still write to me today and they're in their twenties and thirties now. Most of them are okay. I still try to answer the really serious letters myself.

Credo, anzi immagino, che l'intenzione dell'autore fosse proprio quella di esprimere e rappresentare un disagio molto forte, quello di chi, come il protagonista del romanzo, un giornalista - uomo mediamente disperato afflitto da varie turbe di carattere religiososessuale - che incaricato di rispondere alla posta del cuore dal giornale per il quale lavora sotto mentite spoglie, si trova invece ad essere spettatore inerme e catalizzatore passivo delle miserie e delle disgrazie dei suoi stessi lettori, e che per fare questo abbia voluto disorientare il lettore cercando di trasmettergli la stessa sofferenza e la stessa impotenza che affligge il suo protagonista.

Per quanto me ne importava, alla fine, alla Signorina Cuorinfranti, avrebbero anche potuto sparargli. Beh, facciamo in dueterzi: View all 21 comments. Jan 27, Perry rated it really liked it Shelves: Charged with Meaning; Lefty Leaning "I don't really like to stop the show But I thought that you might like to know That the singer's going to sing a song And he wants you all to sing along" "Sgt. As the book be Charged with Meaning; Lefty Leaning "I don't really like to stop the show But I thought that you might like to know That the singer's going to sing a song And he wants you all to sing along" "Sgt.

As the book begins, an NYC newspaper editor, aptly named "Shrike," assigns an unnamed male newspaper columnist under the pseudonym "Miss Lonelyhearts" to write an advice column similar in ilk to "Dear Abby". Under the collective weight of the genuine agony and life's loads of the advice-seekers, Miss Lonelyhearts begins to suffer severe depression. At after-hours gatherings, Shrike repeatedly hazes Miss Lonelyhearts, condemning his religion and his affinity for art as the "opiate of the masses" and jokes that Miss Lonelyhearts is "an idealist in collision with humanity.

Do not let life overwhelm you. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering. To ease his pain, he turns to drinking, religion, traveling with his fiancee', and an animalistic affair with Shrike's wife. Miss L meets with a lady, at her insistence, who wrote that her poor crippled husband cannot satisfy her intimate needs. West leaves it ambiguous on whether Miss L's fornication with the lady was driven by a Messiah complex, an ephemeral apostasy, or a mixture of both.

This novella had the feel of a Marxist parable, the explanation of which would require my going far beyond the scope of a simple book review as well as into the bio of the author. That should tell you, at least, that its 80 pages are charged with meaning, latent and patent, which is why I give this novella 4 stars. All things considered, while the book is probably great for book club banter, it was not exactly a pleasure to read.

View all 5 comments. Those who can laugh at the absurdity of it all. I had a really weird laugh at the end of this one. Something that might be born if 'huh? Miss Lonelyhearts, a man known only by the name of his agony aunt style column, is deeply affected by the letters from his readers. At the beginning of the tale he appears to be on the fence with his ideas on faith and slowly tumbles into a full blown messiah complex.

Along the way, Nathanael West's astute observations and sharp wit keep us entertained. Man has a tropism for ord I had a really weird laugh at the end of this one. Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in the other. Mandolins are tuned G D A E.

Keys yearn to mix with the change The overtly tragic comic tone of this tale is what makes it a win. Prodded by his conscience, he began to generalize. Men have always fought their misery with dreams. Although dreams were once powerful, the have been made puerile by the movies, radio and newspapers. And soon after this, he begins his descent down loony land. You'd think this is strange, but from what I have observed in the world, this is exactly how some people cope.

Creating a strange alternate reality, with no space for these truths. However, when you are not particularly affected by it, you can laugh it all off and Miss Lonelyhearts gives one plenty of opportunity for that. View all 3 comments. While reading my last book, The Man in the High Castle, a character was asked if he read "Miss Lonelyhearts" ML by Nathanael West which he replied he never read that story, so he could not tell the Asian couple the meaning of it.

After having read this I bet the Asian couple were in a kind of culture shock. Dick mention it in his works. I lov While reading my last book, The Man in the High Castle, a character was asked if he read "Miss Lonelyhearts" ML by Nathanael West which he replied he never read that story, so he could not tell the Asian couple the meaning of it. I know that there was a movie with Montgomery Clift called "Miss Lonelyhearts" which I plan on seeing someday.

Our Darkest American Masterpiece

I have a feeling the movie is going to be kid's play compared to this dark book. ML is classified as a black comedy but there was nothing funny about this book. He is a satirist which is what I would say his intent in ML. The letters are desperate pleas for advice in difficult heart wrenching situations. You find out right away that ML is a man who is not know as such.

His newspaper editor is continually ridiculing ML quest for his want of Christian behavior. One of these transgressions comes back to haunt him. West died in a car crash with his young wife in Scott Fitzgerald died unexpectedly a day prior. They were waked in the same funeral home in adjoining rooms. View all 13 comments. West was a contemporary of F. His letters come from a pitiable cross section of humanity: Indeed, I was startled by how explicit West is in his language and his sexual situations; this in no way feels like a book from My copy, a Daunt Books reissue, has been given a cartoon cover and a puff from Jonathan Lethem to emphasize how contemporary it feels.

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Jul 02, Nicole rated it it was amazing Shelves: There is a section where Shrike effectively tortures Miss Lonelyhearts with narrative, telling story after story of other lives, possible lives, while Miss Lonelyhearts lies in bed suffering from an illness that may or may not be entirely spiritual. Then you've got the letters to Miss Lonelyhearts, themselves also narratives of other lives, of suffering lives, though these are nothing like what Shrike puts together, the slick, generic productions he uses to torme that was Then you've got the letters to Miss Lonelyhearts, themselves also narratives of other lives, of suffering lives, though these are nothing like what Shrike puts together, the slick, generic productions he uses to torment and to distance himself from humanity, his dead pan.

So that's going on. Then, there are these little moments within the writing itself at which I just marvelled. The fact that Miss Lonelyhearts has no name, and each step of the narrative reinforces the strangeness of this, his role not his identity: When Miss Lonelyhearts quit work, he found that the weather had turned warm and that the air smelt as though it had been artificially heated. He decided to walk to Delehanty's speakeasy for a drink.

In order to get there, it was necessary to cross a little park. He entered the park at the North Gate and swallowed mouthfuls of the heavy shade that curtained its arch. He walked into the shadow of a lamp-post that lay on the path like a spear. It pierced him like a spear. What can you even say about writing like that? Depite what goodreads tells you, I actually read this from a volume of four collected works of Nathanael West; I think I'll be coming back for the others. Oct 16, Chrissie rated it did not like it Shelves: I guess I will write a review, but all it can possibly contain is a list of what I dislike.

The way the book is described in the Audible book description made me think it might be interesting! To be fair, I will tell you what they say: As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights.

He also suffers from the pranks and cynical advice of his editor at the newspaper, named "Shrike", which is also a type of predatory bird. Miss Lonelyhearts tries several approaches as a way out of this depression including religion, escaping to the countryside, and sex but only ends up more confused. However, the novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony.

The novel can be treated as a meditation on the theme of theodicy, or the problem of why evil exists in the world. The novel's protagonist is psychologically overwhelmed by his perception of this evil, which is treated as an explanation for his increasingly desperate psychological condition. Although the characters of Miss Lonelyhearts are grotesque caricatures, the periodic letters sent to Miss Lonelyhearts, which describe real people with real insoluble problems, serve to ground the novel's Expressionism in reality. The second paragraph is fine too, until its last sentence.

His confusion does not show. His behavior is erratic and violent from start to finish. His thoughts are perceived by me as being purely nonsensical. I never once related to either the man nor his situation. The story is more about him and little about the dire circumstances of those writing to him. This prevents one from feeling empathy for them.

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Neither can we relate to his reaction to their problems if we do not intimately feel the problems of the letter writers. Look at the first sentence of the third paragraph. In talking just about his stupid concerns and behavior, one is given little perception of the problems wracking Depression-era American society! The theological reasoning is full of holes and just plain crazy.

Miss Lonelyhearts

We are told he does that, and she does that. It felt to me as if I were reading stage directions for a play, not a novel! I felt nothing for any character, disliked the writing style. Ideas are poorly expressed. The story is utterly boring.

Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West

The book begins with a short introduction to both this novella and Nathanael West 's The Day of the Locust. It told me nothing significant. The book concludes with a short biographical piece in which John Sanford speaks of his abbreviated friendship with Nathanael West. Both read as fillers, rather than real content. The audiobook is narrated by L. A Ganser and Kevin Pariseau. I have no complaints, but the reading is nothing special either.

Three stars for the narration. View all 11 comments. Plenty of reviewers seem to disagree with the former: It's a close-third person narrative, which, during pauses, I recalled as a first-person, such was its access to one character's inner life whilst the rest remained as if behind a pane of frosted [4. It's a close-third person narrative, which, during pauses, I recalled as a first-person, such was its access to one character's inner life whilst the rest remained as if behind a pane of frosted glass. Miss Lonelyhearts is a young American s newspaperman, straight, reluctantly assigned to write an advice column.

The name probably made me more kindly-disposed towards the character than if he'd just been called plain old Fred or Joe. The paper's policy to fill the column with religious hokum rather than genuine responses means that he's powerless to help the people who write in. Not only does Miss L lack vocation and aptitude, he's more helpless than people in most helping professions, where funding at least allows for sticking a band-aid over a compund-fracture of a life. Street scenes sound like Breughels; these are Great-Depression families in desperate need of decent health care, jobs, social security, social workers, therapists, better domestic violence laws and better housing.

Harried by one, they are hurried by the other. He too considers the job a joke, but after several months at it, the joke begins to escape him. He sees that the majority of the letters are profoundly humble pleas for moral and spiritual advice, that they are inarticulate expressions of genuine suffering. He also discovers that his correspondents take him seriously. For the first time in his life, he is forced to examine the values by which he lives.

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This examination shows him that he is the victim of the joke and not its perpetrator. And most of all he makes a complete mess of what we'd now call professional boundaries. If you've ever worked with deprived communities the readers' letters are horribly recognisable - not enough has changed. Other than policing and perhaps medicine and teaching, this encompasses lots of jobs which rarely find their way into fiction, despite huge potential for interesting stories.

You may even once have had a similar colleague with rather unsympathetic attitudes whose presence in the work was baffling, and who made more realistic versions of the mess Miss L does. The prose is well honed; a great deal of meaning and feeling is mysteriously enshrined in few words, not necessarily unusual ones. However, the editor's, Shrike's the shrike, the butcher bird which impales its prey on thorns rants can be hyperbolic and surreally hilarious: God alone is our escape.

The church whose symbol is the trinity new-style: Father, Son and Wirehaired Fox Terrier. I'd seen the title ' Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West' plenty of times before, and had thought it stood for something twee-er and wryer, about letters from society ladies, not the poor and desperate.

For some reason I had also associated West's name with Herman Melville, and I only just noticed that he wrote The Day of the Locust which must be the basis for the John Schlesinger film. Stylistically this turned out to be something of a hidden gem, though in subject a very rough one. Though the column is intended to be fluff, and is seen as such by the editor to whom Lonelyhearts reports, for the people who write seeking advice, it is serious. The columnist finds himself overwhelmed by the many versions of tragedy that he must respond to, becomes depressed, and turns, on one hand, to drink, fights, and affairs, and on the other to a Christianity he deeply believes in, but which is mocke Miss Lonelyhearts is the tale of a male advice columnist in Depression Era New York City.

The columnist finds himself overwhelmed by the many versions of tragedy that he must respond to, becomes depressed, and turns, on one hand, to drink, fights, and affairs, and on the other to a Christianity he deeply believes in, but which is mocked by those around him.

Lonelyhearts himself is an ethicist's nightmare, violating boundaries with those who write to him for advice. This novel paints a bleak picture of Depression Era New York, and does so in crisp clear language. Little empathy is generated for the protagonist, and there is no hopeful vision of a functional alternative to either the ineffective religious fervor or the empty hedonism portrayed.

It is hard not to see parallels to The Golden Notebook: Perennial Classics edition which I recently read and reviewed. Both portray protagonists who are affected by the bleak letters to advice columns, both present unrewarding sexual relationships as the norm, and neither offer much hope to counteract the critiques of the societies they portray. On the other hand stylistically, they are vastly different.

Nathanael West 's prose is spare and he does little to deepen his characters and create emotional connection to them. Doris Lessing , by contrast, builds a rich, sometimes even lush, world, lingering over details, creating beauty and depth, despite the similarly pessimistic overall viewpoint. Lessing encourages the reader to engage deeply with her themes, whereas there is something almost aggressive in West's approach to the reader. It is not simply the spare masculinity in the style of West that has this effect, since Ernest Hemingway 's prose has those qualities, and yet, at least for me, Hemingway uses the style to create profound connection and meaning.

Many appear to find this book brilliant and darkly funny, but I came away cold. He provides an angry, funny critique of a society, but builds firm connections to characters, and provides a sense of hope that makes for a much more enjoyable experience. Apr 18, Amal Bedhyefi rated it liked it. This has got to be one of the strangest book I've ever read. Miss Lonelyhearts is a very American tragedy and state-of-the-nation novella published in The unsuspecting, poetic, obnoxious and tragic characters , the illiterate letters-to-the-editor, describing the personal misery and failures of the public and the peculiar writing style filled with dark humour left me dazzled.

This short novella is a brutal depiction of everything that went wrong during the "Great Depression". Aug 05, Sidharth Vardhan rated it really liked it Shelves: Aside from terrible selection of cover, this is a beautiful book - a small existional capsule set in times of Great Depression. It probably would have made a more powerful theatrical play.

Miss Lonelyhearts is name of a newspaper column written by surprise!

As if it wasn't enough of commoditification, the real name of writer is not named and he is constantly refered to as Miss Lonelyhearts. When he looked out of a window, he composed the skyline by balancing one building against another. If a bird flew across this arrangement, he closed his eyes angrily until it was gone. Feb 27, Catherine Elcik rated it did not like it. What the hell just happened?? I wanted to love this book.