{"product_id":"nathanael-west-novels-other-writings-loa-93-isbn-9781883011285","title":"Nathanael West: Novels \u0026 Other Writings (LOA #93)","description":"Library of America offers the most complete collection ever  published of Nathanael West's writings. Along with the four novels for which he is  famous, this authoritative collection gathers stories, poetry, essays and plays, film scripts and  treatments, and letters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the Dada-inspired \u003ci\u003eThe Dream Life of Balso Snell\u003c\/i\u003e (1931), he freely mixes high-flown literary and religious allusions with erotic and scatological humor. \u003ci\u003eMiss Lonelyhearts\u003c\/i\u003e (1933) presents, in a series of grotesque, starkly etched episodes, the  spiritual breakdown of a newspaper columnist overwhelmed by his  readers’ suffering. By contrast, \u003ci\u003eA Cool Million\u003c\/i\u003e (1934) reduces the eternal optimism of Horatio Alger’s novels to a brutal, cartoonish farce. In his last work, \u003ci\u003eThe Day of the Locust\u003c\/i\u003e (1939), West renders with hallucinatory precision the reverse side of  the Hollywood dream, as he choreographs a cast of failures, has-beens,  and deluded glamour-seekers in what becomes an apocalyptic dance of  death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlso included is a generous sampling of West’s other surviving work,  ranging from freewheeling improvisations and grotesque comic tales to  more mainstream work written with Hollywood or Broadway in mind, and  including his anti-war satire \u003ci\u003eGood Hunting\u003c\/i\u003e and his adaptation of Francis Ile’s famous crime novel \u003ci\u003eBefore the Fact\u003c\/i\u003e.  The uncollected West shows him as a writer who embodied the  contradictions and crazy-quilt exuberance of American culture—and raises  the question of how he might have developed had his career not been cut  short. Selected correspondence with William Carlos Williams, F. Scott  Fitzgerald, Malcolm Cowley, Bennett Cerf, and others rounds out the  volume and sets West’s literary life in fuller context.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLIBRARY OF AMERICA \u003c\/b\u003eis an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.“Nathanael West’s stunning four novels are American tales, rooted in our  transmogrifying soil. Morality plays they are, classified as comedies.  They are indeed often funny. Funny as a crutch.” —Elizabeth Hardwick, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“If your collection is shamefully lacking in West, this splendid volume  gives you virtually his entire career. One of the finest collections of  the year.” \u003ci\u003e— \u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eWhen \u003cb\u003eNathanael West\u003c\/b\u003e (1903–1940) died in a California highway accident at the age of  thirty-seven, his originality and brilliance were little known outside  an intensely admiring circle of fellow writers. Not until West’s four novels  were reissued in the late 1950s was he acknowledged as one of the most  gifted writers of his generation. His masterpieces \u003ci\u003eMiss Lonelyhearts\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Day of the Locust\u003c\/i\u003e,  with their blending of manic farce and despairing compassion, and their  vision of an America awash in its own mass-produced fantasies, read  like a prophecy of much that was to come in American literature and  life.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSacvan Bercovitch\u003c\/b\u003e (1933–2014), volume editor, was the 2007 recipient of the Bode-Pearson Prize for Lifetime Achievement in American Studies, the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Puritan Origins of the American Self\u003c\/i\u003e, and editor of the multi-volume \u003ci\u003eCambridge History of American Literature\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Library of America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302656725221,"sku":"NP9781883011284","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781883011284_4d80aead-4b4c-4f7d-a3b3-e61322118b0f.jpg?v=1742928533","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/nathanael-west-novels-other-writings-loa-93-isbn-9781883011285","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}