On this day in 1939 Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust was published. Although now ranked with F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon as one of the best novels about Hollywood, and on the Modern Library's Top 100 of the century list, The Day of the Locust had mixed reviews when it came out and was a commercial flop. (As was Miss Lonelyhearts and West's other two novels: in his only decade of writing -- he died in a car crash on December 22, 1940, at the age of 37 -- West made $1,280 from his books.) The failure of The Day of the Locust compelled him to continue working as a screenwriter, and to continue living in the Hollywood that his novel so darkly satirized ... FULL STORY »
