Nathanael West (birth
name: Nathan Wallenstein
Weinstein) (1903-1940).
American Writer
West as Drawn by David Levine
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Anaïs Nin
(1903-1977)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature
and Culture: The Grotesque
Christ as a
Stockbroker: # 1 on
the Bestseller List at
the Start of the Great
Depression (1929)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
The Dream Life of
Balso Snell (1931)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Miss Lonelyhearts
(1933)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
A Cool Million (1934)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Horatio Alger
(1832-1899)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
The Day of the Locust (1939)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Young Nathan with His Parents,
Max and Anna
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Nathanael West at 21 (1924)
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The Grotesque
Nathanael West’s Passport
Photo, 1930
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The Grotesque
Nathanael West (1931)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Nathanael West, First Trip to
Hollywood, 1931
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Nathanael West, Erwinna, PA,
1932
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Nathanael West on the Cover of
Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Nathanael West on a Hunting Trip with
William Faulkner
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Nathanael West in Mexico
(1937)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Nathanael West with His Wife
Eileen
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Eileen McKinney West in Mexico
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
Notice of Nathanael and Eileen
West’s Death
West’s Grave
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:
The Grotesque
"Perhaps I can make you understand. Let's start from the beginning. A
man is hired to give advice to the readers of a newspaper. The job is
a circulation stunt and the whole staff considers it a joke. He
welcomes the job, for it might lead to a gossip column, and anyway
he's tired of being a leg man. He considers the job a joke, but after
several months at it, the joke begins to escape him. He sees that the
majority of the letters are profoundly humble pleas for moral and
spiritual advice, that they are inarticulate expressions of genuine
suffering. He also discovers that his correspondents take him
seriously. For the first time in his life, he is forced to examine the
values by which he lives. This examination shows him that he is the
victim of the joke and not its perpetrator.” —Miss Lonelyhearts to
Betty (32)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
And on most days he received more
than thirty letters, all of them alike ,
stamped from the dough of suffering
with a heart-shaped cookie cutter.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (1)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
“I would like to have boy friends like
the other girls and go out on Saturday
nites, but no boy will take me because
I was born without a nose. . . .”
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (2)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
[T]he air smelt as though it had been
artificially heated.
He entered the park at the North Gate
and swallowed mouthfuls of the heavy
shade that curtained its arch. He
walked into the shadow of a lamp-post
that stood on the path like a spear. It
pierced him like a spear.
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (4)
What the little park needed, even
more than he did was a drink. Neither
alcohol nor rain would do. Tomorrow,
in his column, he would ask Brokenhearted, Sick-of-it-all, Desperate,
Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband
and the rest of his correspondents to
come here and water the soil with
their tears. Flowers would then spring
up, flowers that smelled of feet.
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (5)
But the gray sky looked as if it had
been rubbed with a soiled eraser. It
held no angels, flaming crosses, olivebearing doves, wheels within wheels.
Only a newspaper struggled in the air
like a kite with a broken spine.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (5)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
His caresses kept pace with the
sermon. When he had reached the
end, he buried his triangular face like
the blade of a hatchet in her neck.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (8)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
And how dead the world is . . . a world
of doorknobs.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (9)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Miss Lonelyhearts found himself
developing an almost insane
sensitiveness to order. Everything had
to form a pattern: the shoes under the
bed, the ties in the holder, the pencils
on the table. When he looked out a
window, he composed the skyline by
balancing one building against another.
If a bird flew across this arrangement,
he closed his eyes angrily until it was
done.
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (10)
[H]er arms showed round and smooth
like wood that has been turned by the
sea.
[H]is tongue had become a fat thumb.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (11)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
He finished his laugh with a short
bark.
He felt as though his heart was a
bomb, a complicated bomb that would
result in a simple explosion, wrecking
the world without rocking it.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (13)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Miss Lonelyhearts drank steadily. He
was smiling an innocent, amused
smile, the smile of an anarchist sitting
in the movies with a bomb in his
pocket. If the people around him only
knew what was in his pocket. In a little
while he would leave to kill the
President.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (14)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Miss Lonelyhearts felt as he had felt
years before, when he had
accidentally stepped on a small frog.
Its spilled guts had filled him with pity,
but when its suffering had become
real to his senses, his pity turned to
rage and he had beaten it frantically
until it was dead.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (17)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
The stone shaft cast a long,
rigid shadow on the walk in
front of him. He sat staring at
it without knowing why until
he noticed that it was
lengthening in rapid jerks, not
as shadows usually lengthen.
He grew frightened and
looked up quickly at the
monument. It seemed red
and swollen in the dying sun,
as though it were about to
spout a load of granite seed.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (19)
ENGL 2020 Themes in
Literature and Culture: The
Grotesque
Giorgio De Chirico, Mystery and
Melancholy of a Street
Giorgio Di Chirico
Nostalgia of the Infinite
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
He saw a man who appeared to be on
the verge of death stagger into a
movie theater that was showing a
picture called Blonde Beauty. He saw
a ragged woman with an enormous
goiter pick a love story magazine out
of a garbage can and seem very
excited by her find.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (39)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
The signal was answered by a little cripple, who
immediately started in their direction. He used a
cane and dragged one of his feet behind him in
a box-shaped shoe with a four-inch sole. As he
hobbled along, he made many motions, like
those of a partially destroyed insect. . . .
The cripple had a very strange face. His eyes
failed to balance, his mouth was not under his
nose; his forehead was square and bony; and
his round chin was like a forehead in miniature.
He looked like one of those composites used
by screen magazines in guessing contests. . . .
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The
Grotesque
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in Miss
Lonelyhearts (44)
He watched the play of the cripple’s hands. At
first they conveyed nothing but excitement, then
gradually they became pictorial. They legged
behind to illustrate a matter with which he was
already finished, or ran ahead to illustrate
something he had not yet begun to talk about.
As he grew more articulate, his hands stopped
trying to aid his speech and began to dart in and
out of his clothing. One of them emerged from a
pocket of his coat, dragged some sheets of
letter paper.
And Homer Simpson in The Day of the Locust
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Miss Lonelyhearts (45)
The Day
of the
Locust
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Around quitting time, Tod Hackett heard a great din on
the road outside his office. The groan of leather
mingled with the jangle of iron and over all beat the
tattoo of a thousand hooves. He hurried to the
window.
An army of cavalry and foot was passing. It moved
like a mob; its lines broken, as though fleeing from
some terrible defeat. The dolmans of the hussars, the
heavy shakos of the guards, Hanoverian light horse,
with their fat leather, caps and flowing red plumes,
were all jumbled together in bobbing -disorder. Behind
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Day of the Locust (59)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
the cavalry came the infantry, wild sea of waving
sabretaches, sloped-muskets, crossed shoulder belts
and, swinging cartridge boxes. Tod recognized the
scarlet infantry of England with their white shoulder
pads, the black infantry of the Duke of Brunswick, the
French grenadiers with their enormous white gaiters,
the Scotch with bare knees under plaid skirts.
While he watched, a little fat man, wearing a cork sunhelmet, polo shirt and knickers, darted around the
corner of the building in pursuit of the army.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Day of the Locust (59)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
"Stage Nine you bastards—Stage Nine!" he screamed
through a small megaphone.
The cavalry put spur to their horses and the infantry
broke into a dogtrot. The little man in the cork hat ran
after them, shaking his fist and cursing.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Day of the Locust (59)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
He left the car at Vine Street. As he walked along, he
examined the evening crowd. A great many of the
people wore sports clothes which were not sports
clothes. Their sweaters, knickers, slacks, blue flannel
jackets with brass buttons were fancy dress. The fat
lady in the yachting cap was going shopping, not
boating; the man in the Norfolk jacket and Tyrolean
hat was returning, not from a mountain, but an
insurance office; and the girl in red slacks and sneaks
with a bandanna around her head had just left a
switchboard, not a tennis court .
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Day of the Locust (60)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
He was determined to learn much more. They were the
people he felt he must paint. He would never do a fat
red barn, old stone wall or sturdy Nantucket fisherman.
From the moment he had seen them, he had known,
that, despite his race, training, and heritage, neither
Winslow Homer [see below—Homer’s painting The
Rustics] or Thomas Ryder could be his masters and he
turned to Goya and Daumier.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Day of the Locust (60)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
On the corner of La Huerta Road was a miniature
Rhine castle with tarpaper turrets pierced for archers.
Next to it was a brightly colored shack with domes
and minarets out of the Arabian Nights. Again he was
charitable. Both houses were comic, but he didn't
laugh. Their desire to startle was so eager and
guileless.
It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and
romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the
results of that are. But it is easy to sigh. Few things
are sadder than the truly monstrous.
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Day of the Locust (61)
“Here you black rascal. A mint julep.”
A Chinese servant came running with a Scotch and
soda.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Day of the Locust (69)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
The air of the garden was heavy with the odor of
mimosa and honeysuckle. Through a slit in the blue
serge sky poked a grained moon that looked like an
enormous bone button. A little flagstone path, made
narrow by its border of oleander, led to the edge of the
sunken pool. On the bottom, near the deep end, he
could see a heavy, black mass of some kind.
'"What is it?" he asked.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Day of the Locust (70)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
She kicked a switch that was hidden at the base of a
shrub and a row of submerged floodlights illuminated the
green water. The thing was a dead horse, or, rather, a
life-size, realistic reproduction of one. Its legs stuck up
stiff, and straight and it had *an enormous, distended
belly. Its hammerhead lay twisted to one side and from
its mouth, which was set in an agonized grin, hung a
heavy, black tongue.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Day of the Locust (70)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
One day, while opening a can of salmon for lunch, his thumb
received-a nasty cut. Although the wound must have hurt, the
calm, slightly querulous expression- he usually wore did not
change. The wounded hand writhed about on the kitchen table
until it was carried to the sink by its mate and bathed tenderly in
hot water.
His hands began to bother him. He rubbed them against the
edge of the table to relieve their itch, but it only stimulated them.
When he clasped them behind his back, the strain became
intolerable. They were hot and swollen. Using the dishes as an
excuse, he held them under the cold water tap of the sink.
His hands kept his thoughts busy. They trembled and jerked, as
though troubled by dreams. To hold them still, he clasped them
together. Their fingers twined like a tangle of thighs in miniature.
He snatched them apart and sat on them.
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in Day of
the Locust (88, 98, 101)
Homer Simpson’s Hands
As he watched these people writhe on the hard seats of
their churches, he thought of how well Alessandro
Magnasco would dramatize the contrast between their
drained out, feeble bodies and their wild, disordered
minds. He would not satirize them as Hogarth of
Daumier might, nor would he pity them. He would paint
their fury with respect, appreciating its awful, anarchic
power and aware they had it in them to destroy
civilization.
Surreal/Grotesque Passages in
Day of the Locust (142)
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Culture: The Grotesque
Alessandro
Magnasco,
Soldiers
Feasting
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature
and Culture: The Grotesque
Alessandro
Magnasco,
Interrogations in
Jail
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature
and Culture: The Grotesque
Honore Daumier, The Third
Class Carriage
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature
and Culture: The Grotesque
Honore Daumier,
Louis Phillipe
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature
and Culture: The Grotesque
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
The Day of the
Locust (John
Schlesinger,
1975)
Title
Chapter
Duration
“Everybody Works”
1
616
“Homer”
8
628
“Danger”
16
350
“Premiere Night”
21
923
“Pestilence”
22
7
Total
Day of the Locust (John
Schlesinger, 1975)
ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and
Culture: The Grotesque
32 minutes