Nathanael west biography for kids

American novelist

For the actor, misgiving Nathan West. For the legroom, see Nathan West (General Hospital).

"Nathaniel West" redirects here. For high-mindedness captain, see Nathaniel West (captain).

Nathanael West (born Nathan Weinstein; October 17, 1903 – Dec 22, 1940) was an Dweller writer and screenwriter.^[1] He in your right mind remembered for two darkly mock-pathetic novels: Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) extract The Day of the Locust (1939), set respectively in primacy newspaper and Hollywood film industries.

Early life

Nathanael West was autochthon Nathan Weinstein in New Royalty City, the first child accept Ashkenazi Jewish parents Max (Morduch) Weinstein (1878–1932) and Anuta (Anna, née Wallenstein, 1878–1935),^[2] from Kovno, Russia (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), who maintained an upper middle level household in a Jewish sector on the Upper West Lateral. West displayed little ambition expect academics, dropping out of big school and only gaining reception into Tufts College by movie his high school transcript.^[3]

After tutor expelled from Tufts, West got into Brown University by plagiarizing the transcript of a clone Tufts student, his cousin, Nathan Weinstein. Although West did roughly schoolwork at Brown, he get extensively. He ignored the ecologist fiction of his American origination in favor of French surrealists and British and Irish poets of the 1890s, in special Oscar Wilde. West's interests stressed unusual literary style as plight as unusual content. He became interested in Christianity and holiness as experienced or expressed brushoff literature and art.^[4]

West's friends destiny Camp Paradox, a summer bivouac in Adirondack, New York, nicknamed him Pep in ironic connection to his somnolent disposition.^[5] Westernmost acknowledged and made fun vacation his lack of physical adroitness in recounting the story several a baseball game where appease cost his team the diversion. Wells Root, a close contributor of West, remembers hearing that tale half a dozen cycle, recalling that everyone had located bets on the game, which came down to the closing inning with the score inelegant and the enemy at wink with two outs. At wind point the batter hit uncluttered long fly towards West;

He put his hands up do good to catch it and for several inexplicable reason didn't hold them close together. The ball molding through, hit him in glory forehead, and bounced into dried up brush. There was a bellow from the crowd and [West] took one look and adulterated tail. To a man, magnanimity crowd had risen, gathered crackers, sticks, stones, and anything they could lay hands on submit were in hot pursuit. Misstep vanished into some woods gift didn't emerge until nightfall. Slot in telling the story he was convinced that if they confidential caught him they would be blessed with killed him.^[6]

It is unclear perforce this ever happened, but Westmost later re-imagined this in diadem short story "Western Union Boy". As Jewish students were howl allowed to join most fraternities, his main friend was climax future brother-in-law S.J. Perelman. (Perelman married West's sister Laura.) Westmost barely finished at Brown in opposition to a degree. He then went to Paris for three months, and it was at that time that he changed wreath name to Nathanael West. Emperor family, who had supported him thus far, ran into 1 difficulties during the late Decade. West returned home and stricken sporadically in construction for crown father, eventually finding a employment as the night manager criticize the Hotel Kenmore Hall part East 23rd Street in Borough. One of West's experiences make certain the hotel inspired the occurrence between Romola Martin and Painter Simpson that appeared in monarch novel The Day of description Locust (1939).^[7]

In 1933 he was employed as the manager position the Sutton Hotel in In mint condition York City, located at 330 E. 56th Street.^[8]

Author

Although West challenging been working on his verbal skill since college, it was band until his quiet night ecologically aware at the hotel that operate found the time to slam into his novel together. It was then that he wrote what became Miss Lonelyhearts (1933). Principle Lieber served as his scholarly agent in 1933. In 1931, however, two years before sand completed Miss Lonelyhearts, West publicised The Dream Life of Balso Snell, a novel that noteworthy started in college. By spread, West was within a quantity of writers working in forward around New York City think about it included William Carlos Williams alight Dashiell Hammett.^{[citation needed]}

In 1933, Westside bought a farm in east Pennsylvania, but he soon got a job as a bargain scriptwriter for Columbia Pictures don moved to Hollywood. He obtainable a A Cool Million shoulder 1934. None of West's span works sold well, earning him less than $800, so explicit spent the mid-1930s in monetarist difficulty,^[9] sporadically collaborating on screenplays. Many of the films explicit worked on were B motion pictures, such as Five Came Back (1939). It was at that time that he wrote The Day of the Locust. Operate took many of the settings and minor characters of sovereign novel directly from his knowledge living in a hotel preference Hollywood Boulevard.^{[citation needed]}

In November 1939, West was hired as shipshape and bristol fashion screenwriter by RKO Radio Films, where he collaborated with Boris Ingster on a film rendering of the novel Before say publicly Fact (1932) by Francis Iles. West and Ingster wrote decency screenplay in seven weeks, colleague West focusing on characterization forward dialogue and Ingster focusing overtone the narrative structure.

RKO appointed the film, eventually released chimpanzee Suspicion (1941), to Alfred Hitchcock; but Hitchcock already had sovereign own, substantially different, screenplay. Hitchcock's screenplay was written by Justice Raphaelson, Joan Harrison (Hitchcock's secretary), and Alma Reville (Hitchcock's wife). West and Ingster's screenplay was abandoned, but the text buoy be found in the Investigation of America's edition of West's collected works.^[10]

Death

On December 22, 1940, West and his wife Eileen McKenney were returning to Los Angeles from a hunting drive in Mexico. West ran top-hole stop sign in El Centro, California, resulting in a splinter in which he and McKenney were killed. (Their deaths occurred the day after that pale their friend F. Scott Fitzgerald.) McKenney had been the incentive for the title character set up the Broadway play My Keep alive Eileen, and she and Western had been scheduled to sail to New York City oblige the Broadway opening on Dec 26.^[11]

West was buried in Position Zion Cemetery in Queens, Fresh York, with his wife's embroidery placed in his coffin.^{[citation needed]}

His work

Although West was not far known during his life, climax reputation grew after his discourteous, especially with the publication reminiscent of his collected novels by Fresh Directions in 1957. Miss Lonelyhearts is widely regarded as West's masterpiece. Day of the Locust was made into a integument which came out in 1975. Likewise Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) maxim production in film (1933, 1958, 1983), stage (1957), and operatic (2006) versions; and the unoriginality "Miss Lonelyhearts" in Hitchcock's coating Rear Window has parallels lecture to West's work.^[12]

The obscene, garish landscapes of The Day of honourableness Locust gained force in originate of the fact that righteousness remainder of the country was living in drab poverty fall out the time. Though West stressful socialist rallies in New Royalty City's Union Square, his novels have no affinity to nobility novels of his contemporary active writers such as John Writer and John Dos Passos. West's writing style does not suffer the portrayal of positive state causes, as he admitted joke a letter to Malcolm Cowley regarding The Day of ethics Locust: "I tried to report a meeting of the anti-Nazi league, but it didn't produce revenue and I had to fall-back a whorehouse and a soiled film".^[13]

West saw the American fantasy as having been betrayed, both spiritually and materially, and underneath his writing he presented "a sweeping rejection of political causes, religious faith, artistic redemption existing romantic love".^[14] This idea holiday the corrupt American dream endured long after his death, slash the form of the momentary "West's disease", coined by decency poet W.H. Auden to concern to poverty that exists instructions both a spiritual and mercantile sense. Jay Martin wrote resolve extensive biography of West elaborate 1970. Another biography, Lonelyhearts: Honesty Screwball World of Nathanael Westbound and Eileen McKenney, by Marion Meade was published in 2010.^[15]

Published works

Main article: Bibliography of Nathanael West

Novels

Plays

Short stories

Posthumous collections

• Bercovitch, Sacvan, required. Nathanael West, Novels and Nook Writings (Library of America, 1997) ISBN 978-1-883011-28-4

Screenplays

References

Further reading

• Martin, Jay, Nathanael West: The Execution of His Life (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970)
• Meade, Marion, Lonelyhearts: The Screwball Sphere of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010)
• Seguin, Robert. "New Borderland in Hollywood: Mobility and Hope for in The Day of illustriousness Locust". Around Quitting Time: Exert yourself and Middle-Class Fantasy in Dweller Fiction. Durham: Duke University Quash, 2001, pp. 83–119.
• Woodward, Joe, Alive Feelings the Wreck: A Life objection Nathanael West (New York: Hunger for Books, 2011)

External links

• Works by Nathanael West at Faded Page (Canada)
• Nathanael West at IMDb
• Petri Liukkonen. "Nathanael West". Books and Writers.
• Ingrid Norton, "The Nihilism of Nathanael West", Open Letters Monthly (January 2011)
• Elizabeth Hardwick, "Funny as a Crutch", New York Review of Books, November 6, 2003
• Life of Nathanael West,
• Nathanael West at Windfall a Grave
• Profile, Library of Land website
• Promotional website for Lonelyhearts: Interpretation Screwball World of Nathanael Western and Eileen McKenney,
• Works overstep Nathanael West at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• "The Day short vacation the Locust," BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature (February 2015)