October 17: Nathanael West

Novelist and satirist Nathanael West (Weinstein) was born in New York City on this date in 1903. West was a high school dropout who cheated his way into Tufts and Brown by forging transcripts, then worked sporadically in construction and as a night manager in a hotel. In 1933 he published Miss Lonelyhearts, by which time he was hanging out with S.J. Perelman, William Carlos Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dashiell Hammett. He spent the mid-1930s as a Hollywood screenwriter, working mostly on B-movies. His reputation did not really grow until after his death in a traffic accident in 1940, and especially after 1957, when his novels were collected and reissued. Miss Lonelyhearts, about an advice columnist reckoning with desperate New Yorkers during the Depression, is considered to be the masterpiece of his four novels, but he also achieved acclaim with The Day of the Locust (1939), about Hollywood’s early years and the betrayal of the American Dream.
“Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears.”—Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust