FWIW, a novel and writer mentioned in recent posts, A Feast
of Snakes by Harry Crews, has ties to West's Day of the
Locust. Critics have pointed out that Crews' ending in A
Feast echoes the one West used in Locust.
Ed Lynskey
> I am currently rereading the works of Nathanael
West, and
> it occurred to me that his bleak view of the
human
> condition (which, in his case, means *all humans*)
is very
> much in line with what we call "noir". A novel like
A Cool
> Million could easily be rewritten as a tight
fifties
> paperback by changing the tongue-in-cheek narrators
voice
> into the voice of a dude who actually believes in
what he's
> doing, even if he doesn't know what he's doing. The
Day of
> the Locust wouldn't need any such stylistic changes:
it is
> a perfect cold dish of dark stuff.
> So I propose that we add West to the list of
noir
> precursors and practitioners. When we go down that
way, we
> end up collecting a lot of the greatest American
writers,
> starting with Twain and including Faulkner and
Hemingway -
> and now West.
>
> Next is Nelson Algren, whose work is staring at me
from the
> library.
>
> Best regards,
>
> MrT
=====
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