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Feb. 3rd, 2010 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amredthelector...My mom sent me burnt cookies and socks for my birthday. Thanks mom. Thanks a lot.
Day 13: A fictional book
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
This is a great book. It's a wonderfully dark and surreal look at the fakeness of Hollywood and the destructiveness of people. It deals with sex and drinking and child actors and cock fights and just general crazies. The main characters are sad, pathetic people who have deluded themselves into following the 'American Dream', and you feel sorry for them. But at the same time, they disgust you. The novel slowly builds, at first showing them fairly normal, and then heaping on flaws and weirdness until you get to the finale. And this ending? Is horrifying. It makes you feel sick and scared. And while the film based on the book isn't all that great (and seems a bit narmful at times) the ending is pitch-perfect.
This book isn't really the best for light reading, and some people may just find it too weird and dark. I personally love it, though. It's powerful, in the way it makes you feel sort of sick about America and the 'American Dream'. And the best thing about it? It was written in 1939, and a lot of the crazy behavior described in the book is still around today.
Also, it makes a fantastic companion piece to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Day 13: A fictional book
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
This is a great book. It's a wonderfully dark and surreal look at the fakeness of Hollywood and the destructiveness of people. It deals with sex and drinking and child actors and cock fights and just general crazies. The main characters are sad, pathetic people who have deluded themselves into following the 'American Dream', and you feel sorry for them. But at the same time, they disgust you. The novel slowly builds, at first showing them fairly normal, and then heaping on flaws and weirdness until you get to the finale. And this ending? Is horrifying. It makes you feel sick and scared. And while the film based on the book isn't all that great (and seems a bit narmful at times) the ending is pitch-perfect.
This book isn't really the best for light reading, and some people may just find it too weird and dark. I personally love it, though. It's powerful, in the way it makes you feel sort of sick about America and the 'American Dream'. And the best thing about it? It was written in 1939, and a lot of the crazy behavior described in the book is still around today.
Also, it makes a fantastic companion piece to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
