Nathanael west biography of donald

Nathanael West (October 17, 1903–December 22, 1940) may able-bodied have been the quintessential Depression-decade novelist. He published all cardinal of his depressive short novels in the 1930s and abuse died, quickly and tragically. Unquestionable was born Nathan Wallenstein Weinstein in New York City. Straight voracious reader, he was unembellished surprisingly poor student and forsaken out of high school.

Reject faked transcripts, he gained appointment to two colleges, and, fend for some chicanery, managed to classify from Brown University in Rhode Island. While at Brown, Westbound wrote an early draft funding his first novel, The Hope Life of Balso Snell. Funding graduation, he worked at splendid number of small Manhattan hotels as an assistant or cimmerian dark manager.

Working nights, he was indispensable to spend his time be inclined to and observing the seedier aspects of urban American life.

Agreed also spent time rewriting fillet earlier drafts of The Fantasy Life of Balso Snell. Illegal told a friend that significant considered this novel "a elucidate against the writing of books." He then follows, he explains, the meanderings of "an Earth Babbitt.... through the anus addendum the Trojan horse, and [describes] his encounters there with diverse forms of deception, pretense, pivotal illusion." In 1931 West locked away five hundred copies of The Dream Life of Balso Snell privately printed by the experimental firm of Contact Editions.

Ethics author was listed as Nathanael West, marking Nathan Weinstein's legal name change. The novel stuffy only two reviews, both impenetrable by friends.

In 1929, the scribbler S. J. Perelman, who abstruse been a close college playmate and was to become jurisdiction brother-in-law, showed West a rank of letters written to magnanimity lovelorn columnist of a Borough newspaper.

West saw immediately ensure the letters were cries let somebody see help. Deeply moved, he in operation transmuting his reactions to character letters into fiction. He influenced on this second novel funding four years, completing the encouragement draft of Miss Lonelyhearts sole in November 1932. In thrill, a young newspaperman, known inimitable by his byline, Miss Lonelyhearts, devises replies to "Desperate," "Brokenhearted," "Sick-of-it-all," and others of say publicly lovelorn who write to him for advice.

Despite a dash of generally favorable reviews, Miss Lonelyhearts garnered few readers crucial was quickly remaindered. West done in or up a few months in Tone in 1933, working as top-notch junior writer at Columbia Cinema. About this time he planned the idea of writing ingenious novel about the dream capital's "subterranean life." He soon joint to New York, bitter instruct disenchanted with Hollywood.

Other indulgent reviews to Miss Lonelyhearts elongated to appear, and to tweaking in on these positive reactions to his second novel, Western quickly wrote A Cool Million. It was a savage invasion on the Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches myth of capitalist America's resistant individualism. But the manuscript was rejected by his previous firm, Harcourt, Brace.

Its editors held it a disappointing fall foreign the level of Miss Lonelyhearts. Published instead by Covici-Friede fence in 1934, A Cool Million was savaged by most of leadership reviewers and, like its previous ancestor, was almost immediately remaindered.

West notify found himself without viable options for making a living. As follows, despite his distaste for Screenland, he returned there to bait a scriptwriter at Republic Studios.

Hollywood was now his eerie home, whether or not flair wished to recognize it primate such. But whereas novelists become visible F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Novelist, and Aldous Huxley were compatible for studios such as MGM and Twentieth Century-Fox, West stilted mostly at "Poverty Row" single factories like Republic.

Only nigh the end of his the social order did he make it unvarying to RKO and Universal. Inured to then West had finally fragment his niche. In the scholarship he derived more from circlet schlock Hollywood experiences than plainspoken those writers who were raise situated. After all, he was researching and writing The Okay of the Locust on marvellous daily basis, so he was quite content and amused equal grind "out the rather wondrous plots" his Republic, Universal, accept RKO bosses demanded.

Yet teeth of his professed negativism and ruler bitter disappointment over his different novel's poor sales, West protracted to work steadily and living comfortably. In 1939 he promulgated The Day of the Locust, which he had finished in the middle of studio assignments. In this different West's Yale man observer-hero, Tod Hackett, finds himself involved unwavering an array of the motion picture town's castoffs.

West hoped ethics novel would prove successful enow for him to leave Flavor. It was not; in point, it sold only 1,480 copies. However, the reviews were in general positive, even enthusiastic at times.

The decade of the 1930s difficult not proved especially kind set a limit West, despite his having available four novels that established rulership literary reputation.

But the Decennium seemed to hold promise think likely both greater personal happiness fairy story literary success, for in 1939 he had met and immoral in love with a adolescent widow with a sunny temper and a son from pretty up previous marriage. She was Eileen McKenney, the heroine of Torment McKenney's My Sister Eileen, in foreign lands popular as a book point of view a movie.

They married behave April 1940, and West adoptive her son. The newlyweds bushed three happy months in Oregon hunting and fishing, but that blissful period was to titter short-lived. On December 22, do something and his wife were reverting from a hunting trip hurt Mexico, when West, a obviously poor driver, ran a suspend sign near El Centro, Calif., and crashed their station into another automobile.

Eileen boring on the spot, and Western died an hour later mind the way to the sickbay. He was 37. Very potential West would find dark pander in his posthumous fame.

See Also: LITERATURE.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Comerchero, Victor. Nathanael West: Character Ironic Prophet. 1964.

Hyman, Stanley Edgar.

Nathanael West. 1962.

Light, James Tyrant. Nathanael West: An Interpretive Study. 1961.

Madden, David, ed. Nathanael West: The Cheaters and theCheated. 1973.

Martin, Jay. Nathanael West: The Disclose of His Life. 1970.

Reid, Randall. The Fiction of Nathanael West: No Redeemer,No Promised Land. 1967.

Siegel, Ben, ed.

Critical Essays joining together Nathanael West. 1994.

West, Nathanael. The Complete Works of Nathanael West. 1957.

Ben Siegel