Re: recent posts on Nathanael West. Here are a few other
incidental details, only a few of which may be accurate.
miker notes West's heritage, but I'll just add that he was
born Nathaniel von Wallenstein Weinstein. I can't remember
when he changed the spelling of his first name and his last
name altogether. I think the quasi-(ambivalently/wholly?)
anti-semitic West wanted to hide his Jewish origins (also in
part to (attempt to) access certain Ivy League circles). For
what it's worth, the other literary American
Nathaniel--Hawthorne--changed the spelling of his name too
(added that final e). miker notes he graduated from Brown.
There is some sort of hijinx in West's higher education. He
went to Tufts originally, and maybe transferred to Brown on
another student's (also named Nathaniel Weinstein)
transcript. Or some such. West may have been distraught over
Fitzgerald's death when he crashed his car, but I believe
that it was said that he was a notoriously bad driver. His
wife died at the scene of the accident and West on the way to
the hospital (they had been married about 8 months earlier).
They were returning from a hunting trip. West was an avid
hunter.
Some connections were made a little while back between West's
writings and other works, maybe with some mention of Charles
Willeford. Without giving away too much, I'd point out that
the end of the Woman Chaser seems to echo
(at least in my mind, maybe because I was reading them too
closely together) the end of The Day of the Locust.
Doug
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