Nathanael West

Essay on Nathanael West.

Mariya Ivanova Milcheva

English Philology , third year

Faculty number : 0504060

Preface.Sources. I have read the whole novel Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West.The book is published by New Directions Publishing Corporation and the date of publication of the book is 06-1969 .I have borrowed the book from a friend of mine.

I have read the other novel I made a comment in this paper at the following internet site:

http://www.bartleby.com/156/

Section One:General Introduction to the Author(Nathanael West)

Nathanael West(1903-1940)was born in New York and was the first child in the family of German-speaking Russian Jewish parents who came from Lithuania.He is best known with his satiric novels of the 1930s.He graduated from Brown University in 1924.During a 15month long stay in Paris,in 1931 he finised his first novel The Dream Life of Balso Snell –a story of grotesque characters inside the Trojan horse.

In 1933 he publishes Miss Lonelyhearts which is regarded from the most critics as Nathanael West’s masterpiece.During the same year he buys a farm in Eastern Pennsylvania but soon gets a job as a script writer for Columbia Pictures and moves to Hollywood.There he publishes his third novel A Cool Million.

Another signifficant story of West is The Day of the Locust(1939)which dramatizes the false world and people on the fringes of movie industry.He takes many of the settings and the main characters’features from his own experience during his living in a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard.

Nathanael West life comes to its bitter end in 1940 after a car accident in El Centro,California.On their way home from a hunting trip to Mexico,and only a day after F.Scott Fitzgerald death of heart attack,West(well-known bad driver)and his wife Eileen McKenny did not survive after the terrible crash.

Section Two:Summary and commentary on Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West/Chapter one and two(Miss...