The day of the locust

Description:	The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, with an introduction by David Thomson, and photographs by Lucy Gray.When Nathanael West died, in a car crash that also killed his wife Eileen, on December 22, 1940, he was not a well-known author. In 1939 his novel The Day of the Locust was published. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who died the day before the Wests, had written: “The Day of the Locust has scenes of extraordinary power. Especially I was impressed by the pathological crowd at the premiere, the character and handling of the aspirant actress, and the uncanny almost medieval feeling of some of his Hollywood background set off by those vividly drawn grotesques.” Despite this appreciation, it took years for the book to become recognized as a modern American classic and for critics to agree that The Day of the Locust is the best novel ever written about Hollywood.The novel is pivotal in literary history. It is by turns surreal, revealing of the shams of the motion-picture business, seedy, sinister, macabre, doped-up, sexy, funny, and tragic. As David Thomson states in his introduction: “Nathanael West was one of the first writers to feel that disappointment in America, and to relate it to the false promises, the shine of advertising, and the cult of being good-looking and happy, that had come with the movies. . . . This is the classic American dream slipping over into nightmareit is the locusts eclipsing the sunlight”.Nathanael West (1903-1940), was born in New York City as Nathan Weinstein to Ashkenazi Jewish parents from Lithuania. A high school dropout, he got into Tufts College and Brown University through ruses. At Brown he became friends with S. J. Perelman, who was to become a major humor writer and eventually his brother-in-law. (Another talented in-law, Ruth McKenney, wrote My Sister Eileen, about West’s wife, which was the basis for the long-running Broadway hit.) After graduation Weinstein went to Paris for three months and changed his name. In the late twenties, he worked as night manager in a New York hotel, an experience that inspired the character of Homer Simpson and the incident with Romola Martin in The Day of the Locust. His first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell, was published in 1931. He moved to Hollywood in 1933 to be a scriptwriter for Columbia Pictures. That year the novella Miss Lonelyhearts was published, followed in 1934 by his third novel, A Cool Million. Then, while writing screenplays for B-movies to make a living because his fiction did not sell well, he wrote The Day of the Locust.The twenty photographs are done in the manner of movie stills, as if taken at night. Discrete captions below the photographs identify the subjects. Lucy Gray is an award-winning photographer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, The Independent, and Brick. Her book of photographs of prima ballerinas who are mothers will be published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2014, with an introduction by Hilton Als. Her short film, “Genevieve Goes Boating”, narrated by Tilda Swinton, was named one of the ten best of 2012 by Film Threat. She is married to David Thomson, he of the introduction.--Arion Press website (accessed July 19, 2018).This book was designed and produced, in an edition of 400 numbered copies for sale and 26 lettered copies for complimentary distribution, by Andrew Hoyem, with the assistance of Blake Riley, Lewis Mitchell, Brian Ferrett, Christopher Godek, Mark Sarigianis, Sarah Songer, Rochelle Youk, Leif Erlandsson, Diana Ketcham, Lyssa Black, Thomas Gladysz, and Kaelyn Davis. The type is Monotype Bodoni Book, printed by letterpress. The photographs were printed by offset lithography in two colors, black and metallic, under the direction of Susan Schaefer. The paper is Italian Mouldmade Magnani Velata in two weights. This is the ninety-seventh publication of the Arion Press.--Colophon.Issued in a slipcase.I-ART: Gift of Mark and Carmen Holeman.I-ART: Erratum sheet included.I-ART: Library has 212/400signed by the photographer.
Origin:	2013
Created By:	West, Nathanael; Thomson, David; Gray, Lucy; Hoyem, Andrew
Publisher:	San Francisco : Arion Press, 2013.
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/BookArts/id/2886
Collection:	Herron Library Fine Press and Book Arts Collection
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Copyright:	In Copyright
Subjects:	Motion picture industry--United States--Fiction. Photography, Artistic. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.), full cloth binding Italian mouldmade Magnani Velata

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