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Miss Lonelyhearts
NYC. Height of Depression. The male Miss G columnist is weighted down by gloom. Obscene rhymes repeat, patterned after songs for children or mocking religion. His boss yells them in the office. In the Speakeasy other drunken writers chorus, commiserate and rant, with rape fantasies about female writers.
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1933
About the author
Nathanael West
24 books344 followersBorn Nathanael von Wallenstein Weinstein to prosperous Jewish parents, from the first West set about creating his own legend, and anglicising his name was part of that process. At Brown University in Rhode Island, he befriended writer and humourist S. J. Perelman (who later married his sister), and started writing and drawing cartoons. As his cousin Nathan Wallenstein also attended Brown, West took to borrowing his work and presenting it as his own. He almost didn't graduate at all, on account of failing a crucial course in modern drama. West indulged in a little dramatics of his own and, in tearful contrition, convinced a gullible professor to upgrade his marks.
After spending a couple of years in Paris, where he wrote his first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell, he returned to New York, where he managed (badly by all accounts) a small hotel, the Sutton, owned by his family. As well as providing free board for struggling friends like Dashiell Hammett, the job also gave West ample opportunity to observe the strange collection of misfits and drifters who congregated in the hotel's drugstore. Some of these would appear in West's novel Miss Lonelyhearts.
West spent the rest of his days in Hollywood, writing B-movie screenplays for small studios and immersing himself in the unglamorous underworld of Tinseltown, with its dope dealers, extras, gangsters, whores and has-beens. All would end up in West's final masterpiece, The Day of the Locust.
West's life ultimately ended as tragically as his fictions. Recently married, and with better-paid script work coming in, West was happy and successful. Then, returning from a trip to Mexico with his wife Eileen, he crashed his car after ignoring a stop sign and killed them both. This was just one day after the death of his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald.
After spending a couple of years in Paris, where he wrote his first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell, he returned to New York, where he managed (badly by all accounts) a small hotel, the Sutton, owned by his family. As well as providing free board for struggling friends like Dashiell Hammett, the job also gave West ample opportunity to observe the strange collection of misfits and drifters who congregated in the hotel's drugstore. Some of these would appear in West's novel Miss Lonelyhearts.
West spent the rest of his days in Hollywood, writing B-movie screenplays for small studios and immersing himself in the unglamorous underworld of Tinseltown, with its dope dealers, extras, gangsters, whores and has-beens. All would end up in West's final masterpiece, The Day of the Locust.
West's life ultimately ended as tragically as his fictions. Recently married, and with better-paid script work coming in, West was happy and successful. Then, returning from a trip to Mexico with his wife Eileen, he crashed his car after ignoring a stop sign and killed them both. This was just one day after the death of his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald.
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February 25, 2022“Her raised arms pulled her breast up until they were like pink-tipped thumbs.”
Girl what??….god i hate being an English major sometimes
Girl what??….god i hate being an English major sometimes
October 16, 2019
This is a great little novel, so compelling and disturbing that I have trouble writing about it. It is unique in its elliptical development, its harsh realism verging on nightmare, and its emotional viciousness. I have read it three times, at least, and each time I have a slightly different reaction to it.
The novel's main character is an advice columnist--hence the name "Miss Lonelyhearts"--who is going insane under the weight of his disordered life and the burden of the letters from desperate souls, piled on his desk every morning, On the surface it is a stark condemnation of the American Dream more disturbing than Fitzgerald or Steinbeck, made brutal by its hard-boiled prose, and brought close to apocalypse by a hero obsessed with Christ's wounds and the necessity of blood sacrifice.
But what I have said--strange as it is--normalizes Miss Lonelyhearts too much, for Nathanael West's book is also blackly funny in a way that only a book steeped in European cynicism and iconoclasm could be. In spite of its superficial similarities, it is a world--I almost said an ocean--away from the earnestness of the Great American Novel. It reminds me more of Georg Grosz and Nicolai Gogol than of The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath.
Nathan Weinstein--Nathanael West was his nom de plume--was born into an upper middle class family of Russian secular Jews who lived on the Upper West Side. He had little interest in his father's construction business and instead read precociously, devouring Shakespeare and Dickens, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy--all by the age of ten. He dropped out of high school, forged his way into Tufts; dropped out of Tufts, forged his way into Brown, where he continued to study little and read much. He had little patience for the staples of American fiction, favoring a literary diet of French surrealism and British decadence, enlivened with an occasional cup of Christian mysticism.
After graduating university, Weinstein moved to Paris, began dressing like a dandy, and changed his name to West. He completed the novel he had been working on fitfully through college: The Dream Life of Balso Snell, a deliberately offensive piece of surreal near-obscenity, filled with Freudian cliches and literary parody, which takes place entirely within the body of the Trojan Horse.
It is helpful to see Miss Lonelyhearts as a continuation of the artistic aims of Balso Snell. Its jarring transitions, its disturbing juxtapositions of mystical visions with scatological and sexual themes is all part of a plot to assault the sensibilities of the reader and alienate him from the text of the work itself. This alienation in turn may lead him to question his assumptions about literature and life (although I'm not convinced West cares one way or the other if he does so).
It’s funny though. Throughout all of the novel’s sordid scenes, throughout its hero’s dark comic fumblings and messianic delusions, that pile of letters on his desk—surrounded they though may be by crippling ironies—still move the reader. We cannot forget--anymore than he can forget—the abject miseries of those lost souls who pour out the details of their hopeless lives in the letters they addressed to “Dear Miss Lonelyhearts.”
I will with end this review with one of those haunting letters.
Dear Miss Lonelyhearts--
I am sixteen years old now and I dont know what to do and would appreciate it if you could tell me what to do. When I was a little girl it was not so bad because I got used to the kids on the block makeing fun of me, but now I would like to have boy friends like the other girls and go out on Saturday nites, but no boy will take me because I was born without a nose--although I am a good dancer and have a nice shape and my father buys me pretty clothes.
I sit and look at myself all day and cry. I have a big hole in the middle of my face that scares people even myself so I cant blame the boys for not wanting to take me out. My mother loves me, but she crys terrible when she looks at me.
What did I do to deserve such a terrible bad fate? Even if I did do some bad things I didnt do any before I was a year old and I was born this way. I asked Papa and he says he doesnt know, but that maybe I did something in the other world before I was born or that maybe I was being punished for his sins. I dont believe that because he is a very nice man. Ought I commit suicide?
Sincerely yours,
Desperate
June 11, 2022
L’IMPERO DEI SOGNI
Montgomery Clift è il giornalista protagonista nel film del 1958 “Lonelyhearts – Non desiderare la donna d’altri” diretto da Vincent J. Donehue.
Nathanael West si chiamava in realtà Nathan Weinstein e proveniva da una famiglia ebrea tedesca non osservante vissuta a lungo alla periferia dell’Impero Russo, in Lituania, da dove emigrò in US poco prima che il nostro nascesse.
E West fu uno dei primi critici del Sogno Americano, che dal suo punto di vista era piuttosto una Grande Illusione. Individuò prima di molti il nesso tra malessere individuale e sociale, le illusioni trappola offerte dalla società dei consumi (conseguenza del capitalismo di stampo protestante).
Da anticipatore, e outsider, ebbe scarso successo in vita (vita breve, morto insieme alla moglie per incidente d’auto a soli trentasette anni – pare godesse nomea di pessimo guidatore): si guadagnò da vivere dirigendo un albergo a New York, e guadagnò meglio da sceneggiatore di film di serie B a Hollywood. Dove, se le soddisfazioni artistiche furono magre, il compenso era se non altro decoroso: per esempio, con questo libro guadagnò in tutto cinquecento dollari, quanto guadagnava in una sola settimana come soggettista di film.
Il successo, di critica e pubblico, arrivò postumo: e oggi lo si mette tra i grandi classici del Novecento americano.
Monty Clift insieme al suo caporedattore Shrike interpretato da Robert Ryan.
La trama di questo breve romanzo ruota intorno a una delle più classiche rubriche di giornali e riviste, la posta del cuore. Che, per esempio, negli anni Settanta in Italia costituiva un tratto che accomunava trasversalmente i lettori di Famiglia Cristiana e quelli di Lotta Continua.
I cuori solitari.
Nella traduzione, insistita e ripetuta in ogni edizione italiana, diventano cuori infranti.
In un quotidiano newyorkese la rubrica in questione prospera ed è seguita, tempestata di lettere scritte essenzialmente da donne (che si firmano Stanca-di-Tutto, Disperata, Spalle Larghe…)
A tenerla, però, è un uomo, di cui non sapremo mai il nome: chi si nasconde dietro la firma Miss Lonelyhearts è il protagonista di questa storia.
Il tutto negli anni della Grande Depressione (il romanzo uscì nel 1933), il che rende, ovviamente, quella ‘posta del cuore’ particolarmente penosa.
Monty Clift e Mirna Loy che interpreta la moglie di Shrike.
Iniziato come una specie di scherzo, alquanto cinico, il Miss Lonelyhearts si lascia coinvolgere dai racconti che riceve, dalle storie di solitudine e dolore che gli vengono raccontate: sentendosi incapace di fornire un vero aiuto, Mister/Miss Lonelyhearts precipita in una spirale autodistruttiva dalla quale nulla sembra risollevarlo, né l’alcol, né il sesso, né la religione, neppure l’arte.
Al giornale gli consigliano di mollare la rubrica, si sta rovinando: ma come se fosse afflitto da Sindrome di Stoccolma, Mister/Miss Lonelyhearts non riesce più a staccarsene, si è ormai immedesimato al massimo, contagiato da solitudine e pene altrui diventate ormai anche le sue. Mister/Miss Lonelyhearts vive sulla sua pelle la vera Grande Depressione.
Shrike è il nome del personaggio interpretato da Robert Ryan, il caporedattore di Miss Lonelyhearts: Shrike in inglese è l’averla, l’uccello che infilza le sue prede sugli spini.
Miss Lonelyhearts rappresenta il primo tentativo di sabotare i meccanismi compensatori messi in atto dalla società per imbrigliare e sfruttare le energie negative prodotte dalla pressione che essa stessa esercita quotidianamente sulle masse. La presunzione di controllare (traendone per di più profitto), anche la vita onirica collettiva, incanalandone le pulsioni in direzioni innocue e ben collaudate, viene analizzata e smascherata da West partendo da una sua manifestazione marginale: l’odierno surrogato povero della confessione costituito dalle rubriche di consigli ai lettori.
Riccardo Duranti nella postfazione all’edizione di e/o.
Credo sia riprova che si tratta di un piccolo grande classico il suo iter editoriale in Italia: Bompiani, Edizioni e/o, Passigli, Minimum Fax. Non lo si vuole far sparire!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NQJ3...
Un omaggio a tutte le vere Miss Lonelyhearts (dal film “Rear Window – La finestra sul cortile” di Alfred Hitchcock, 1954).
Montgomery Clift è il giornalista protagonista nel film del 1958 “Lonelyhearts – Non desiderare la donna d’altri” diretto da Vincent J. Donehue.
Nathanael West si chiamava in realtà Nathan Weinstein e proveniva da una famiglia ebrea tedesca non osservante vissuta a lungo alla periferia dell’Impero Russo, in Lituania, da dove emigrò in US poco prima che il nostro nascesse.
E West fu uno dei primi critici del Sogno Americano, che dal suo punto di vista era piuttosto una Grande Illusione. Individuò prima di molti il nesso tra malessere individuale e sociale, le illusioni trappola offerte dalla società dei consumi (conseguenza del capitalismo di stampo protestante).
Da anticipatore, e outsider, ebbe scarso successo in vita (vita breve, morto insieme alla moglie per incidente d’auto a soli trentasette anni – pare godesse nomea di pessimo guidatore): si guadagnò da vivere dirigendo un albergo a New York, e guadagnò meglio da sceneggiatore di film di serie B a Hollywood. Dove, se le soddisfazioni artistiche furono magre, il compenso era se non altro decoroso: per esempio, con questo libro guadagnò in tutto cinquecento dollari, quanto guadagnava in una sola settimana come soggettista di film.
Il successo, di critica e pubblico, arrivò postumo: e oggi lo si mette tra i grandi classici del Novecento americano.
Monty Clift insieme al suo caporedattore Shrike interpretato da Robert Ryan.
La trama di questo breve romanzo ruota intorno a una delle più classiche rubriche di giornali e riviste, la posta del cuore. Che, per esempio, negli anni Settanta in Italia costituiva un tratto che accomunava trasversalmente i lettori di Famiglia Cristiana e quelli di Lotta Continua.
I cuori solitari.
Nella traduzione, insistita e ripetuta in ogni edizione italiana, diventano cuori infranti.
In un quotidiano newyorkese la rubrica in questione prospera ed è seguita, tempestata di lettere scritte essenzialmente da donne (che si firmano Stanca-di-Tutto, Disperata, Spalle Larghe…)
A tenerla, però, è un uomo, di cui non sapremo mai il nome: chi si nasconde dietro la firma Miss Lonelyhearts è il protagonista di questa storia.
Il tutto negli anni della Grande Depressione (il romanzo uscì nel 1933), il che rende, ovviamente, quella ‘posta del cuore’ particolarmente penosa.
Monty Clift e Mirna Loy che interpreta la moglie di Shrike.
Iniziato come una specie di scherzo, alquanto cinico, il Miss Lonelyhearts si lascia coinvolgere dai racconti che riceve, dalle storie di solitudine e dolore che gli vengono raccontate: sentendosi incapace di fornire un vero aiuto, Mister/Miss Lonelyhearts precipita in una spirale autodistruttiva dalla quale nulla sembra risollevarlo, né l’alcol, né il sesso, né la religione, neppure l’arte.
Al giornale gli consigliano di mollare la rubrica, si sta rovinando: ma come se fosse afflitto da Sindrome di Stoccolma, Mister/Miss Lonelyhearts non riesce più a staccarsene, si è ormai immedesimato al massimo, contagiato da solitudine e pene altrui diventate ormai anche le sue. Mister/Miss Lonelyhearts vive sulla sua pelle la vera Grande Depressione.
Shrike è il nome del personaggio interpretato da Robert Ryan, il caporedattore di Miss Lonelyhearts: Shrike in inglese è l’averla, l’uccello che infilza le sue prede sugli spini.
Miss Lonelyhearts rappresenta il primo tentativo di sabotare i meccanismi compensatori messi in atto dalla società per imbrigliare e sfruttare le energie negative prodotte dalla pressione che essa stessa esercita quotidianamente sulle masse. La presunzione di controllare (traendone per di più profitto), anche la vita onirica collettiva, incanalandone le pulsioni in direzioni innocue e ben collaudate, viene analizzata e smascherata da West partendo da una sua manifestazione marginale: l’odierno surrogato povero della confessione costituito dalle rubriche di consigli ai lettori.
Riccardo Duranti nella postfazione all’edizione di e/o.
Credo sia riprova che si tratta di un piccolo grande classico il suo iter editoriale in Italia: Bompiani, Edizioni e/o, Passigli, Minimum Fax. Non lo si vuole far sparire!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NQJ3...
Un omaggio a tutte le vere Miss Lonelyhearts (dal film “Rear Window – La finestra sul cortile” di Alfred Hitchcock, 1954).
September 13, 2018
Choosing Your Poison
A story of relentless, universal, even cosmic failure. Every character is a failure: as writer, poet, husband, wife, journalist, and most importantly, follower of Jesus Christ. All are "stamped with the dough of suffering," demonstrate a sort of extreme frustration-neurosis, and are demoralised. Failure provokes cruelty and hatefulness: men dislike each other; men despise women, and gay men only slightly less; women manipulate men when they can; they ignore them when they can't. The world is essentially mad:
The letters-to-the-editor, largely illiterate, describing the personal misery and failures of the public at large pour on to the desk of the advice columnist, Miss Lonelyhearts. He often feels compelled to recommend suicide as the only effective remedy for the pain that is recounted to him. And not just to reduce their pain: "Christ may be the answer," he says, "but if he did not want to get sick he had to stay away from this Christ business." Christ had become "merely decorative" not only in the protagonist's shabby room, where the human figure had been removed from his cross, but also in society at large.
Violence by the stronger against the weaker is normal and expected. The slightest mis-step or ill-considered phrase results in rage and instant retaliation. Prohibition, the Great Experiment, is in force but unenforced; alcohol is the universal drug of choice to dull the tedium of life. Oblivion is the normal state of being for the protagonist. Social contracts from marriage to employment are meaningless formalities and breached in spirit if not in fact. The daily headlines testify to the general barbarity of existence. Racism and suspicion - of blacks, Jews, foreigners - is typical in everyday encounters.
What are the alternatives? Back to the land is a boor. Escape to the South Seas is a worn-out cliche. Hedonism is too expensive. Art is an illusion. Treating the world as a joke is generally what the world does but Miss Lonelyhearts simply can't do that. Shrike, his editor, suggests the only available path, "The church is our only hope, the First Church of Christ Dentist, where He is worshiped as Preventer of Decay."
One has to remind oneself repeatedly while reading it that Miss Lonelyhearts was written in 1933. Nothing about it is dated. It anticipates the culture of sex, drugs, social disintegration and national narcissism that was only temporarily interrupted by WWII but that re-emerged with force in the 1960's and thereafter. Miss Lonelyhearts could easily be mistaken for the novelistic manifesto of existentialism. 'Suicide is always a live option' is a theme presented persistently a decade before Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus, and two decades before its translation hit New York City.
That West was able to detect the more fundamental deterioration occurring below the more apparent economic ills of the Great Depression is remarkable. His perception is poetic:
And not even if Christ gets back on his cross does it make any difference to the fate of anyone involved.
A story of relentless, universal, even cosmic failure. Every character is a failure: as writer, poet, husband, wife, journalist, and most importantly, follower of Jesus Christ. All are "stamped with the dough of suffering," demonstrate a sort of extreme frustration-neurosis, and are demoralised. Failure provokes cruelty and hatefulness: men dislike each other; men despise women, and gay men only slightly less; women manipulate men when they can; they ignore them when they can't. The world is essentially mad:
"You are plunging into a world of misery and suffering, peopled by creatures who are strangers to everything but disease and policemen. Harried by one, they are hurried by the other..."
The letters-to-the-editor, largely illiterate, describing the personal misery and failures of the public at large pour on to the desk of the advice columnist, Miss Lonelyhearts. He often feels compelled to recommend suicide as the only effective remedy for the pain that is recounted to him. And not just to reduce their pain: "Christ may be the answer," he says, "but if he did not want to get sick he had to stay away from this Christ business." Christ had become "merely decorative" not only in the protagonist's shabby room, where the human figure had been removed from his cross, but also in society at large.
Violence by the stronger against the weaker is normal and expected. The slightest mis-step or ill-considered phrase results in rage and instant retaliation. Prohibition, the Great Experiment, is in force but unenforced; alcohol is the universal drug of choice to dull the tedium of life. Oblivion is the normal state of being for the protagonist. Social contracts from marriage to employment are meaningless formalities and breached in spirit if not in fact. The daily headlines testify to the general barbarity of existence. Racism and suspicion - of blacks, Jews, foreigners - is typical in everyday encounters.
What are the alternatives? Back to the land is a boor. Escape to the South Seas is a worn-out cliche. Hedonism is too expensive. Art is an illusion. Treating the world as a joke is generally what the world does but Miss Lonelyhearts simply can't do that. Shrike, his editor, suggests the only available path, "The church is our only hope, the First Church of Christ Dentist, where He is worshiped as Preventer of Decay."
One has to remind oneself repeatedly while reading it that Miss Lonelyhearts was written in 1933. Nothing about it is dated. It anticipates the culture of sex, drugs, social disintegration and national narcissism that was only temporarily interrupted by WWII but that re-emerged with force in the 1960's and thereafter. Miss Lonelyhearts could easily be mistaken for the novelistic manifesto of existentialism. 'Suicide is always a live option' is a theme presented persistently a decade before Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus, and two decades before its translation hit New York City.
That West was able to detect the more fundamental deterioration occurring below the more apparent economic ills of the Great Depression is remarkable. His perception is poetic:
"Americans have dissipated their radical energy in an orgy of stone breaking. In their few years they have broken more stones than did centuries of Egyptians. And they have done their work hysterically, desperately, almost as if they knew that the stones would some day break them."
And not even if Christ gets back on his cross does it make any difference to the fate of anyone involved.
August 17, 2015
This is another book that has disappeared from my shelves. GR insist on treating each instance of this as though I might have deleted the book 'by accident' or it's a one-off bug, but I have lost a lot of books and I'm not the only one. I suspect it has something to do with either librarians combining books or changing the names of authors, correcting them. But I can't quite work out how. However I can't think of any other actions that would affect just the odd book and not a lot of books wholesale.
I remember the book as being a work of genius. Something of the Great Depression, letters full of existential crises and a dark humour, Miss Lonelyhearts, 'solving' the problems. Maybe I should reread it?
I remember the book as being a work of genius. Something of the Great Depression, letters full of existential crises and a dark humour, Miss Lonelyhearts, 'solving' the problems. Maybe I should reread it?
October 24, 2017
Don’t be misled by the title and the cover. This short book takes a hard look at serious human issues. Published in 1933 during the “Great Depression”, Miss Lonelyhearts is a dark comedy making light of readers problems. The unnamed narrator and writer of the column is a man. The newspaper considered the advice column a joke, and so did the writer at first. He sums it up best in a conversation with a lady friend, and I’m paraphrasing here. “After a time he doesn’t consider the column a joke anymore. He sees the letters are profound, humble pleas for help; inarticulate expressions of suffering. He realizes the readers take him seriously and he is forced to examine his own life’s values.
August 8, 2017
Book Circle Reads 100
Rating: 4.75* of five
The Publisher Says: Praised by great writers from Flannery O'Conner to Jonathan Lethem, Miss Lonelyhearts is an American classic. A newspaper reporter assigned to write the agony column in the depths of the Great Depression seeks respite from the poor souls who send in their sad letters, only to be further tormented by his viciously cynical editor, Shrike. This single volume of Miss Lonelyhearts features its original Alvin Lustig jacket design, as well as a new introduction by Harold Bloom, who calls it "my favorite work of modern American fiction."
My Review: Totally with Harold Bloom here, this is one of the USA's cultural treasures. In just under 100pp, anomie and alienation and the Problem of Evil (theodicy) are examined thoroughly and from several viewpoints. While telling a louche little tale of drinking, fucking, and cheating, West also manages to incorporate an acid bath of gallows humor into the proceedings. His nudges and winks at the audience are almost post-modern: Shrike, who is the otherwise-unnamed Miss Lonelyhearts' editor, is named for a particularly nasty bird of prey, and the man we call Miss Lonelyhearts is both emasculated and depersonalized by his yclepture.
It's hard to imagine a more complete telling of the tale of man's bitter fate than this one. Trudge along in your path, you dumb oxen, and this is what will overtake you; lift your heads, look at the sky, and dare to yearn? This is what will overtake you. West knew it, felt it, and ultimately lived it by dying early as he drove drunk. Fitting, isn't it.
Rating: 4.75* of five
The Publisher Says: Praised by great writers from Flannery O'Conner to Jonathan Lethem, Miss Lonelyhearts is an American classic. A newspaper reporter assigned to write the agony column in the depths of the Great Depression seeks respite from the poor souls who send in their sad letters, only to be further tormented by his viciously cynical editor, Shrike. This single volume of Miss Lonelyhearts features its original Alvin Lustig jacket design, as well as a new introduction by Harold Bloom, who calls it "my favorite work of modern American fiction."
My Review: Totally with Harold Bloom here, this is one of the USA's cultural treasures. In just under 100pp, anomie and alienation and the Problem of Evil (theodicy) are examined thoroughly and from several viewpoints. While telling a louche little tale of drinking, fucking, and cheating, West also manages to incorporate an acid bath of gallows humor into the proceedings. His nudges and winks at the audience are almost post-modern: Shrike, who is the otherwise-unnamed Miss Lonelyhearts' editor, is named for a particularly nasty bird of prey, and the man we call Miss Lonelyhearts is both emasculated and depersonalized by his yclepture.
It's hard to imagine a more complete telling of the tale of man's bitter fate than this one. Trudge along in your path, you dumb oxen, and this is what will overtake you; lift your heads, look at the sky, and dare to yearn? This is what will overtake you. West knew it, felt it, and ultimately lived it by dying early as he drove drunk. Fitting, isn't it.
October 11, 2023
کتاب خانم سنگ صبور کمدی سیاهیست. داستان در مورد فردی که با نام مستعار خانم سنگ صبور تصمیم میگیرد تا نگارش یکی از ستونهای روزنامه را برای نصیحت آدمهای عاشق وتنها، به عهده بگیرد.
از حالا به بعد او قرار است نامههای غمگین را بخواند که در آنها از زندگی و بخت بد خود گلایه کردهاند؛اما مگر خانم سنگ صبور تا کجا تحمل شنیدن غمهای انسانها را دارد؟
ایدهی داستان رو خیلی دوست داشتم اما خود داستان به دلم ننشست.
از حالا به بعد او قرار است نامههای غمگین را بخواند که در آنها از زندگی و بخت بد خود گلایه کردهاند؛اما مگر خانم سنگ صبور تا کجا تحمل شنیدن غمهای انسانها را دارد؟
ایدهی داستان رو خیلی دوست داشتم اما خود داستان به دلم ننشست.
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- سأتركها من دون تقييم على ان اقرأها لاحقاً بالإنكليزية وأعود لتقييمها بشكل طبيعي.
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September 4, 2022
عجیبه که وقت میکنم بخونم ولی وقت نمیکنم ریویو بنویسم!!
August 21, 2015
A popular notion that makes the rounds on Facebook goes something like this: Life doesn't come with a remote. If you don't like something, get up off your (couch) and change it.
Last Sunday's Prickly City comic strip expressed it this way:
"I was wondering: Why do you let bad things happen?"
"Why do you let bad things happen"
"Touché."
Prickly City, August 9, 2015
But, what if one is confronted with horrific circumstances way beyond one's pay grade? And really believes it's one's personal responsibility to fix them? ...And, by the way, the ground under one's own feet isn't all that solid....
The set-up is that a young man has signed on as a newspaper's "Miss Lonelyhearts," responding in his column to missives from lovelorn and unhappy readers (predominantly women). For the newspaper this is a publicity gambit to increase the circulation, but the suffering conveyed to Miss Lonelyhearts through the letters is real. For the columnist, known throughout the book as "Miss Lonelyhearts," this presents an intolerable dilemma.
As it so happens I recently reread a 2011 article from The New Yorker on the history of birth control that impressed on me the reality of the sort of letters Miss LH was getting (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201... ). I expect the author didn't have to make up those letters. Just to get the idea across: a letter from a woman who'd already had seven babies in twelve years and whose kidneys are now failing, but from whom duty demanded more of the same. She wrote in pitiful semi-literacy that the doctor told them another pregnancy would be the death of her. Her husband said okay--until they got home. That's not much of a spoiler since it appears on p. 2.
Not only that, but the protagonist is a minister's son, already with a tendency toward hyperreligiosity.
Not only that, but his readers/fans/clientele live in the same 'hood and patronize the same speakeasy. There are no boundaries. They know he's a male.
Not only that, but his friends are hard-drinking, misogynistic, homophobic characters given to verbal and sometimes physical expression of those attitudes:
At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end. When they lost this belief, they lost everything. Money and fame meant nothing to them. They were not worldly men.
These were hard-boiled times, but unlike detective stories described by that adjective, there's nary a hero in sight. If the protagonist is not quite part and parcel of the surrounding corruption, neither can he extricate himself from it.
Not only that, but his supervisor is a cynical provocateur, egging him on.
Sometimes our antihero takes it out on those seeking succor. After all, is it not they who have put him in this position?
The common wisdom is that this is an allegorical tragicomedy, but there was nothing funny about it. The author supposedly had communist leanings, so common in those pre-Stalinist times, that he kept from being explicit in his work. I'm guessing he was writing between-the-lines, writing under the guise of allegory and comedy in order to speak out. These are not just allegorical figures. The author has gone quite a way toward making them people.
And that's the answer, really, to the question I posed at the beginning of this review: try and tell the truth.
To the extent there is humor, and if, once upon a time, it was dark, it's now sick humor.
What service does Miss LH thinks he should perform for his supplicants? Sometimes he aims to tell them that by their suffering they are participating in divinity. But that trope won't hunt, so he's seeking a lock on a love that heals...but what sort of miracle could restore them, engulfed in a sick society?
My edition included an afterword from the '60s by Stanley Edgar Hyman, a critic and contributor to The New Yorker who was well known at the time. He explained the allegorical aspects in ways that were helpful without being interpretations with which one would necessarily agree now, for example, with a lot of Freudian analysis. He also contributed a lot of biographical material on the author, fuller but generally consistent with what I could find easily on the Internet and sometimes including aspects that wouldn't be considered politically correct now. If that afterword is available online, I couldn't find it. I may come back and enlarge this section later. For now, suffice it to say that if F. Scott Fitzgerald died without knowing he'd later be considered great, so much the more so for Nathanael West.
Incidentally, I came across an interview with Judy Blume at the beginning of The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008 in which she said:
I once spent three years putting together a book of letters: (Letters to Judy: What Kids Wish They Could Tell You) from my readers. It was emotionally draining, not just because I tried to tie them together with autobiographical material, but because of the letters themselves. At one point I had to go to a therapist to find out how I could keep writing fiction while being responsible (and responsive) to my readers. I was so involved with a couple of kids (I wanted to save them) that the therapist had to teach me how to step back while still being there for them. Over the years there have been seven kids who started to write to me at age twelve--kids with tough lives--who still write to me today and they're in their twenties and thirties now. Most of them are okay. Some are parents. I still try to answer the really serious letters myself.
Life imitating art...imitating life....
April 23, 2017
اسم الرواية الأصلي: Miss lonely hearts
بأعجوبة ما أصبحت ترجمة اسم العمل : الآنسة القلوب الوحيدة :|
يعني بجد؟ ليه؟ يرضي مين دا طيب؟
****************************
“He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain.”
هذا الاقتباس هو ما دفعني لقراءة العمل
والغلاف
جائزة أجمل غلاف من قراءات العام تذهب إليها..
قصة جيدة، ترجمة قاتلة مريعة
بأعجوبة ما أصبحت ترجمة اسم العمل : الآنسة القلوب الوحيدة :|
يعني بجد؟ ليه؟ يرضي مين دا طيب؟
****************************
“He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain.”
هذا الاقتباس هو ما دفعني لقراءة العمل
والغلاف
جائزة أجمل غلاف من قراءات العام تذهب إليها..
قصة جيدة، ترجمة قاتلة مريعة
April 5, 2019
Τίποτα τυχαίο ή περιττό σε αυτό το -δυσανάλογα με τη λογοτεχνική του αξία- μικρό σε μέγεθος βιβλίο. Ο ήρωάς του δεν διαθέτει άλλο όνομα πέραν εκείνου με το οποίο υπογράφει στην εφημερίδα τις συμβουλές του προς το εναγές κοινό του, τους ταπεινούς και καταφρονημένους του κόσμου ετούτου, οι οποίοι αναζητούν κάποια/ όποια λύτρωση, μια χείρα βοήθειας.
Τούτο το απρόσωπο εκκλησίασμα της σύγχρονης εποχής εκπροσωπείται από -και αινεί τον- εξίσου απρόσωπο Ιερέα που απευθύνεται στο ποίμνιό του μέσω της στήλης του στην εφημερίδα – και ως άλλος Χριστός, ο Δεσποινίς Μοναχικές Καρδιές, αποδέχεται τον ρόλο αυτό με στωικότητα και θλίψη.
Αν όμως (παραφράζοντας τον Μαρξ) η θυσία του Χριστού βιώθηκε από τους πιστούς του δόγματος ως τραγωδία, η επανάληψή της μόνο ως φάρσα μπορεί να εκληφθεί. Το αστικό περιβάλλον της Νέας Υόρκης του 20ού αιώνα δεν προσφέρεται για μεγαλειώδεις κινήσεις ψυχικής σωτηρίας. Η απομάγευση έχει επιτελέσει άσπλαχνα και με πλήρη διαύγεια το έργο της και η πάσχουσα ανθρωπότητα της Προτεσταντικής Ηθικής έχει κατ' όνομα μόνο διατηρήσει τη σχέση της με το Επέκεινα και τους μεταφυσικούς ιδεασμούς, όντας ουσιαστικά μηχανιστική, μετρήσιμη και υλιστική (ουδέν το μεμπτόν ως εδώ, ιδίως όταν αποτελεί έναυσμα και έμπνευση για έργα όπως ετούτο).
Πώς μπορεί λοιπόν, για να επανέλθουμε, ο συγγραφέας που ζει σε μια εποχή και μια χώρα στην πρωτοπορία της τεχνολογίας και των καινοτομιών να μιλήσει για τη λύτρωση, για τον ανθρώπινο πόνο, τις ελπίδες και τις διαψεύσεις, αλλά και το πάθος για ολοκλήρωση, για ελπίδα, για αγάπη; Μόνο υπονομεύοντάς το, ρίχνοντας μεταφορικά "τα άγια τοις κυσί", αναδεικνύοντας το παράλογο, το ανοίκειο, το φαιδρό.
Ο Δεσποινίς "Μοναχικές Καρδιές" είναι μια φιγούρα ιλαροτραγική, βγαλμένη μέσα από τη δημιουργική φαντασία του σουρεαλιστή/ συμβολιστή N. West, ο οποίος ως γνήσιος φορέας του zeitgeist της εποχής του προτιμά το σκώμμα, την ειρωνεία, τη διακωμώδηση.
Τίποτε τραγικό δεν αφήνεται να οδηγηθεί στο όριό του, καθώς διακόπτεται από το γελοίο, όπως συμβαίνει και το αντίστροφο. Το μειδίαμα του αναγνώστη ανακόπτεται απότομα εκεί που πάει να σχηματιστεί στα χείλη του. Ο συγγραφέας δεν επιτρέπει την ευκολία της συναισθηματικής ταύτισης και της κατηγοριοποίησης του έργου του. Και είναι η ουδετεροποίηση του θυμικού που επιτρέπει στο πνεύμα και στην κρίση του αναγνώστη να σταθεί μακρόθυμα, αλλά και κριτικά, εξεταστικά απέναντι στους ήρωες και στον εαυτό του ομού.
Κάθε βήμα του κεντρικού ήρωα που πάσχει, πασχίζοντας να πράξει το καλό, δεν έχει σχεδόν ποτέ το αποτέλεσμα που αντιστοιχεί στις προθέσεις του. Ο πόνος των άλλων (και δικός του εξ αντανακλάσεως) μοιάζει με ποτάμι που μέσα σε αυτό επιχειρεί να πλεύσει άτεχνα και αναποτελεσματικά, συχνά καταλήγοντας να κάνει κακό. Η αναπόφευκτη βία η οποία ελλοχεύει σε κάθε βήμα και συνδέει αναπόδραστα τα ανθρώπινα όντα, έρχεται στο προσκήνιο διαρρηγνύοντας τις όποιες προσπάθειες σύμπλευσης, αρμονίας, ανθρώπινης επαφής.
Θαρρείς πως βλέπεις την ανθρωπότητα στην απογυμνωμένη της ουσία: Ένα ποτάμι που οδηγεί στα τάρταρα και ο καθένας μόνος του, μια Μοναχική Καρδιά, στηρίζεται σε ένα οριακά επιπλέον κλαδί, αρνούμενος πεισματικά να χαθεί στην άβυσσο προτού χαιρέκακα τραβήξει στην ίδια μοίρα και τον διπλανό του.
Συγκεφαλαιώνοντας, ο "Αίρων την αμαρτία του κόσμου" δεν είναι φυσικά ο φερώνυμος ήρωας του βιβλίου, αλλά ο μεγάλος αυτός (παραγνωρισμένος στη χώρα μας) συγγραφέας, ο οποίος μετοχετεύει το ταλέντο του στη Μοναχική Καρδιά του ευεπίφορου αναγνώστη, κομίζοντας τη μόνη συγκολλητική ουσία που είναι δυνατή σε έναν απόλυτα παράλογο και άνευ νοήματος κόσμο: εκείνη του ενοποιητικού μύθου της Τέχνης.
Υ.Γ. 1
Δεν είναι τυχαίο πως η Α.Μ. ο H. Bloom αφιέρωσε κάποιες σελίδες του "Πώς και γιατί διαβάζουμε" στο εν λόγω βιβλίο.
Υ.Γ. 2
Εξαιρετικό και το Day of the Locust ("Το άγριο Χόλιγουντ", εκδόσεις Αστάρτη) του N. West.
https://fotiskblog.home.blog/2019/04/...
Τούτο το απρόσωπο εκκλησίασμα της σύγχρονης εποχής εκπροσωπείται από -και αινεί τον- εξίσου απρόσωπο Ιερέα που απευθύνεται στο ποίμνιό του μέσω της στήλης του στην εφημερίδα – και ως άλλος Χριστός, ο Δεσποινίς Μοναχικές Καρδιές, αποδέχεται τον ρόλο αυτό με στωικότητα και θλίψη.
Αν όμως (παραφράζοντας τον Μαρξ) η θυσία του Χριστού βιώθηκε από τους πιστούς του δόγματος ως τραγωδία, η επανάληψή της μόνο ως φάρσα μπορεί να εκληφθεί. Το αστικό περιβάλλον της Νέας Υόρκης του 20ού αιώνα δεν προσφέρεται για μεγαλειώδεις κινήσεις ψυχικής σωτηρίας. Η απομάγευση έχει επιτελέσει άσπλαχνα και με πλήρη διαύγεια το έργο της και η πάσχουσα ανθρωπότητα της Προτεσταντικής Ηθικής έχει κατ' όνομα μόνο διατηρήσει τη σχέση της με το Επέκεινα και τους μεταφυσικούς ιδεασμούς, όντας ουσιαστικά μηχανιστική, μετρήσιμη και υλιστική (ουδέν το μεμπτόν ως εδώ, ιδίως όταν αποτελεί έναυσμα και έμπνευση για έργα όπως ετούτο).
Πώς μπορεί λοιπόν, για να επανέλθουμε, ο συγγραφέας που ζει σε μια εποχή και μια χώρα στην πρωτοπορία της τεχνολογίας και των καινοτομιών να μιλήσει για τη λύτρωση, για τον ανθρώπινο πόνο, τις ελπίδες και τις διαψεύσεις, αλλά και το πάθος για ολοκλήρωση, για ελπίδα, για αγάπη; Μόνο υπονομεύοντάς το, ρίχνοντας μεταφορικά "τα άγια τοις κυσί", αναδεικνύοντας το παράλογο, το ανοίκειο, το φαιδρό.
Ο Δεσποινίς "Μοναχικές Καρδιές" είναι μια φιγούρα ιλαροτραγική, βγαλμένη μέσα από τη δημιουργική φαντασία του σουρεαλιστή/ συμβολιστή N. West, ο οποίος ως γνήσιος φορέας του zeitgeist της εποχής του προτιμά το σκώμμα, την ειρωνεία, τη διακωμώδηση.
Τίποτε τραγικό δεν αφήνεται να οδηγηθεί στο όριό του, καθώς διακόπτεται από το γελοίο, όπως συμβαίνει και το αντίστροφο. Το μειδίαμα του αναγνώστη ανακόπτεται απότομα εκεί που πάει να σχηματιστεί στα χείλη του. Ο συγγραφέας δεν επιτρέπει την ευκολία της συναισθηματικής ταύτισης και της κατηγοριοποίησης του έργου του. Και είναι η ουδετεροποίηση του θυμικού που επιτρέπει στο πνεύμα και στην κρίση του αναγνώστη να σταθεί μακρόθυμα, αλλά και κριτικά, εξεταστικά απέναντι στους ήρωες και στον εαυτό του ομού.
Κάθε βήμα του κεντρικού ήρωα που πάσχει, πασχίζοντας να πράξει το καλό, δεν έχει σχεδόν ποτέ το αποτέλεσμα που αντιστοιχεί στις προθέσεις του. Ο πόνος των άλλων (και δικός του εξ αντανακλάσεως) μοιάζει με ποτάμι που μέσα σε αυτό επιχειρεί να πλεύσει άτεχνα και αναποτελεσματικά, συχνά καταλήγοντας να κάνει κακό. Η αναπόφευκτη βία η οποία ελλοχεύει σε κάθε βήμα και συνδέει αναπόδραστα τα ανθρώπινα όντα, έρχεται στο προσκήνιο διαρρηγνύοντας τις όποιες προσπάθειες σύμπλευσης, αρμονίας, ανθρώπινης επαφής.
Θαρρείς πως βλέπεις την ανθρωπότητα στην απογυμνωμένη της ουσία: Ένα ποτάμι που οδηγεί στα τάρταρα και ο καθένας μόνος του, μια Μοναχική Καρδιά, στηρίζεται σε ένα οριακά επιπλέον κλαδί, αρνούμενος πεισματικά να χαθεί στην άβυσσο προτού χαιρέκακα τραβήξει στην ίδια μοίρα και τον διπλανό του.
Συγκεφαλαιώνοντας, ο "Αίρων την αμαρτία του κόσμου" δεν είναι φυσικά ο φερώνυμος ήρωας του βιβλίου, αλλά ο μεγάλος αυτός (παραγνωρισμένος στη χώρα μας) συγγραφέας, ο οποίος μετοχετεύει το ταλέντο του στη Μοναχική Καρδιά του ευεπίφορου αναγνώστη, κομίζοντας τη μόνη συγκολλητική ουσία που είναι δυνατή σε έναν απόλυτα παράλογο και άνευ νοήματος κόσμο: εκείνη του ενοποιητικού μύθου της Τέχνης.
Υ.Γ. 1
Δεν είναι τυχαίο πως η Α.Μ. ο H. Bloom αφιέρωσε κάποιες σελίδες του "Πώς και γιατί διαβάζουμε" στο εν λόγω βιβλίο.
Υ.Γ. 2
Εξαιρετικό και το Day of the Locust ("Το άγριο Χόλιγουντ", εκδόσεις Αστάρτη) του N. West.
https://fotiskblog.home.blog/2019/04/...
September 21, 2023
West's Disease Revisited
In January 1991, our book group read Nathanael West's short novels "Miss Lonelyhearts" and "Day of the Locust". As the nominator of these books, I was responsible for the initial presentation. I had little memory of the books or, initially of how I approached them thirty years ago; but I recently had the urge to revisit "Miss Lonelyhearts" (1933), set in Depression-era New York City.
"Miss Lonelyhearts" combines bleak sadness with an almost cartoonish portrayal of bodies and snappy short scenes. The main character, only known as Miss Lonelyhearts, is a young man of 26, the son of a minister and a college graduate. He has a job for a nespaper writing the advice to the lovelorn column and receives and responds to squalid, unremitting letters of human misery.
The job gets to Miss Lonelyhearts. He becomes increasingly depressed by the parade of unresolvable human pain and feels the misery of his correspondents, and others, in his own life. His colleagues, particularly his supervisor, Shrike, see his job as a joke and as a money-making gimmick for the paper. Miss Lonelyhearts comes to take human misery, emotional disconnection, and poverty deeply personally and finds no answers. He takes to drinking at the local speakeasy, sitting in the park, wandering the streets, and acts of brutality. He spends much time in his lonely apartment in bed. His fiance, the blandly normal Betty, becomes puzzled by his behavior and wants him to leave his job and find a more remunerative, less emotionally taxing position. Miss Lonelyhearts has affairs with one of his correspondents and with the wife of Shrike.
A key piece of symbolism in the novel is the rock, which in the ocean has waves constantly beating against it but never gives in or changes its character. Late in the book, Miss Lonelyhearts says that he sees himself as a rock, impervious to pain. He is woefully self-deceived.
As I read the book again after many years, I came to remember how I presented "Miss Lonelyhearts" to our book group. The poet W.H. Auden wrote a 1962 book of literary criticism, "The Dyer's Hand" which included an essay, "West's Disease". The great poet examined the four novels West wrote during his short life, including "Miss Lonelyhearts" and found that West failed as both a novelist and a satirist due primarily to the caricatured nature of his writing. Auden questions the hopelessness of West's vision, both as it applies to the lack of religious belief and to its picture of an unredeemably materialistic, commodified society which keeps many people irrevokably in poverty, emotionally stunted, and ignorant. For Auden, West's characters, including Miss Lonelyhearts suffer from a confusion of desires and wishes. Miss Lonelyhearts is caught within himself (desire) with no ability to act on what he wants and to attempt to realize it (wish). This condition Auden calls "West's Disease". He sees it as literarily unsuccessful and, more importantly, as unfortunate as it has become an all-too-common attitude in the United States with people rejecting religion and their country.
In my reading, I thought again about "Miss Lonelyhearts" and about "West's Disease". The novel is sad, haunting and provocative. I was glad to read it again. I was also glad to remember Auden's wise counsel about the nature of "West's Disease".
Robin Friedman
In January 1991, our book group read Nathanael West's short novels "Miss Lonelyhearts" and "Day of the Locust". As the nominator of these books, I was responsible for the initial presentation. I had little memory of the books or, initially of how I approached them thirty years ago; but I recently had the urge to revisit "Miss Lonelyhearts" (1933), set in Depression-era New York City.
"Miss Lonelyhearts" combines bleak sadness with an almost cartoonish portrayal of bodies and snappy short scenes. The main character, only known as Miss Lonelyhearts, is a young man of 26, the son of a minister and a college graduate. He has a job for a nespaper writing the advice to the lovelorn column and receives and responds to squalid, unremitting letters of human misery.
The job gets to Miss Lonelyhearts. He becomes increasingly depressed by the parade of unresolvable human pain and feels the misery of his correspondents, and others, in his own life. His colleagues, particularly his supervisor, Shrike, see his job as a joke and as a money-making gimmick for the paper. Miss Lonelyhearts comes to take human misery, emotional disconnection, and poverty deeply personally and finds no answers. He takes to drinking at the local speakeasy, sitting in the park, wandering the streets, and acts of brutality. He spends much time in his lonely apartment in bed. His fiance, the blandly normal Betty, becomes puzzled by his behavior and wants him to leave his job and find a more remunerative, less emotionally taxing position. Miss Lonelyhearts has affairs with one of his correspondents and with the wife of Shrike.
A key piece of symbolism in the novel is the rock, which in the ocean has waves constantly beating against it but never gives in or changes its character. Late in the book, Miss Lonelyhearts says that he sees himself as a rock, impervious to pain. He is woefully self-deceived.
As I read the book again after many years, I came to remember how I presented "Miss Lonelyhearts" to our book group. The poet W.H. Auden wrote a 1962 book of literary criticism, "The Dyer's Hand" which included an essay, "West's Disease". The great poet examined the four novels West wrote during his short life, including "Miss Lonelyhearts" and found that West failed as both a novelist and a satirist due primarily to the caricatured nature of his writing. Auden questions the hopelessness of West's vision, both as it applies to the lack of religious belief and to its picture of an unredeemably materialistic, commodified society which keeps many people irrevokably in poverty, emotionally stunted, and ignorant. For Auden, West's characters, including Miss Lonelyhearts suffer from a confusion of desires and wishes. Miss Lonelyhearts is caught within himself (desire) with no ability to act on what he wants and to attempt to realize it (wish). This condition Auden calls "West's Disease". He sees it as literarily unsuccessful and, more importantly, as unfortunate as it has become an all-too-common attitude in the United States with people rejecting religion and their country.
In my reading, I thought again about "Miss Lonelyhearts" and about "West's Disease". The novel is sad, haunting and provocative. I was glad to read it again. I was also glad to remember Auden's wise counsel about the nature of "West's Disease".
Robin Friedman
July 17, 2020
You are plunging into a world of misery and suffering, peopled by creatures who are strangers to everything but disease and policemen.
Ha, right you are, sunshine.
This newspaper has hired an agony aunt which is a man, but he’s referred to throughout this teeny tiny 80 page miserable shoot your brains out in despair 1933 novel as Miss Lonelyhearts. There are 15 very short chapters and according to the author hisself each one relates to a religious experience as delineated in the famous book The Varieties of Religious Experience by Henry James�� brother. This went a little bit over my head. There is no plot, Miss Lonelyhearts just drags his sorry ass around and occasionally gets to shag some poor woman.
Point being that reading all theses terminal horror letters from the public day in and day out is making Miss Lonelyhearts sick in the head.
It’s another one of those provocative disturbing the-world-is-a-festering-swamp-of-filth books they use to like to write. Which come to think of it they still like to write. Probably because the world is still a festering swamp of filth.
The characters in this book say remarkable unpleasant stuff to each other.
In the speakeasy he discovered a group of his friends at the bar. They greeted him and went on talking. One of them was complaining about the number of female writers.
“And they’ve all got three names,” he said. “Mary Roberts Wilcox, Ella Wheeler Catheter, Ford Mary Rinehart…”
Then someone started a train of stories by suggesting that what they all needed was a good rape.
If this book was an album it could might be Tomb of the Mutilated by Cannibal Corpse. It could might be that Cannibal Corpse fans would complain at the comparison.
Ha, right you are, sunshine.
This newspaper has hired an agony aunt which is a man, but he’s referred to throughout this teeny tiny 80 page miserable shoot your brains out in despair 1933 novel as Miss Lonelyhearts. There are 15 very short chapters and according to the author hisself each one relates to a religious experience as delineated in the famous book The Varieties of Religious Experience by Henry James�� brother. This went a little bit over my head. There is no plot, Miss Lonelyhearts just drags his sorry ass around and occasionally gets to shag some poor woman.
Point being that reading all theses terminal horror letters from the public day in and day out is making Miss Lonelyhearts sick in the head.
It’s another one of those provocative disturbing the-world-is-a-festering-swamp-of-filth books they use to like to write. Which come to think of it they still like to write. Probably because the world is still a festering swamp of filth.
The characters in this book say remarkable unpleasant stuff to each other.
In the speakeasy he discovered a group of his friends at the bar. They greeted him and went on talking. One of them was complaining about the number of female writers.
“And they’ve all got three names,” he said. “Mary Roberts Wilcox, Ella Wheeler Catheter, Ford Mary Rinehart…”
Then someone started a train of stories by suggesting that what they all needed was a good rape.
If this book was an album it could might be Tomb of the Mutilated by Cannibal Corpse. It could might be that Cannibal Corpse fans would complain at the comparison.
March 10, 2018
Anti(qualsiasi)patìa
Pago anche in questo caso il tempo trascorso tra la fine della lettura e le poche riflessioni che provo a scrivere. Anche se è vero che se a distanza di quasi un mese mi è rimasto poco niente da dire questo assume un suo preciso significato.
Non mi è piaciuto questo breve romanzo.
Non mi è piaciuta la scrittura iperbolica e sincopata di West, e non mi è piaciuta la volontà di rappresentare la critica alla società in cui si muove "la Signorina Cuorinfranti" (siamo a New York negli anni della Grande Depressione) attraverso continui "strappi" emotivi, che dovrebbero lasciare sgomenti mentre invece, come disse qualcuno*, mi hanno lasciata «fredda come un cobra».
Credo, anzi immagino, che l'intenzione dell'autore fosse proprio quella di esprimere e rappresentare un disagio molto forte, quello di chi, come il protagonista del romanzo, un giornalista - uomo mediamente disperato afflitto da varie turbe di carattere religiososessuale - che incaricato di rispondere alla posta del cuore dal giornale per il quale lavora sotto mentite spoglie, si trova invece ad essere spettatore inerme e catalizzatore passivo delle miserie e delle disgrazie dei suoi stessi lettori, e che per fare questo abbia voluto disorientare il lettore cercando di trasmettergli la stessa sofferenza e la stessa impotenza che affligge il suo protagonista.
Eppure Miss Lonelyhearts, che è molto peggio che essere una qualsiasi Signorina Cuorinfranti, è un personaggio antipatico, irritante e fastidioso, e il problema, secondo me, non è solo di empatia: io non cerco empatia quando leggo un'opera, né tanto meno identificazione con la storia o con i personaggi - altrimenti come avrei fatto a portare a termine le quasi mille pagine de Le Benevole di Jonathan Littell ed apprezzare la storia di Maximilian Aue? - però se quest'empatia viene meno devo trovare tra le pagine dell'altro, un interesse che mi trascini a fondo, uno stile che mi faccia rammaricare di non aver scritto io quelle parole, oppure un'attrazione fatale inspiegabile, mentre qui ho trovato solo noia, sbadigli e una dose massiccia di confusione.
Per quanto me ne importava, alla fine, alla Signorina Cuorinfranti, avrebbero anche potuto sparargli.
Ops!
(In compenso bella serata, quella di ieri, con il Gruppo di Lettura Maddecheaoh che come spesso succede si è praticamente diviso in due. Beh, facciamo in dueterzi :-))
(*) E qui siamo alla mitologia romana contemporanea, solo in pochi, o forse nessuno, riconosceranno l'autore di queste parole :-D
Pago anche in questo caso il tempo trascorso tra la fine della lettura e le poche riflessioni che provo a scrivere. Anche se è vero che se a distanza di quasi un mese mi è rimasto poco niente da dire questo assume un suo preciso significato.
Non mi è piaciuto questo breve romanzo.
Non mi è piaciuta la scrittura iperbolica e sincopata di West, e non mi è piaciuta la volontà di rappresentare la critica alla società in cui si muove "la Signorina Cuorinfranti" (siamo a New York negli anni della Grande Depressione) attraverso continui "strappi" emotivi, che dovrebbero lasciare sgomenti mentre invece, come disse qualcuno*, mi hanno lasciata «fredda come un cobra».
Credo, anzi immagino, che l'intenzione dell'autore fosse proprio quella di esprimere e rappresentare un disagio molto forte, quello di chi, come il protagonista del romanzo, un giornalista - uomo mediamente disperato afflitto da varie turbe di carattere religiososessuale - che incaricato di rispondere alla posta del cuore dal giornale per il quale lavora sotto mentite spoglie, si trova invece ad essere spettatore inerme e catalizzatore passivo delle miserie e delle disgrazie dei suoi stessi lettori, e che per fare questo abbia voluto disorientare il lettore cercando di trasmettergli la stessa sofferenza e la stessa impotenza che affligge il suo protagonista.
Eppure Miss Lonelyhearts, che è molto peggio che essere una qualsiasi Signorina Cuorinfranti, è un personaggio antipatico, irritante e fastidioso, e il problema, secondo me, non è solo di empatia: io non cerco empatia quando leggo un'opera, né tanto meno identificazione con la storia o con i personaggi - altrimenti come avrei fatto a portare a termine le quasi mille pagine de Le Benevole di Jonathan Littell ed apprezzare la storia di Maximilian Aue? - però se quest'empatia viene meno devo trovare tra le pagine dell'altro, un interesse che mi trascini a fondo, uno stile che mi faccia rammaricare di non aver scritto io quelle parole, oppure un'attrazione fatale inspiegabile, mentre qui ho trovato solo noia, sbadigli e una dose massiccia di confusione.
Per quanto me ne importava, alla fine, alla Signorina Cuorinfranti, avrebbero anche potuto sparargli.
Ops!
(In compenso bella serata, quella di ieri, con il Gruppo di Lettura Maddecheaoh che come spesso succede si è praticamente diviso in due. Beh, facciamo in dueterzi :-))
(*) E qui siamo alla mitologia romana contemporanea, solo in pochi, o forse nessuno, riconosceranno l'autore di queste parole :-D
February 9, 2017
Charged with Meaning; Lefty Leaning
"I don't really like to stop the show
But I thought that you might like to know
That the singer's going to sing a song
And he wants you all to sing along"
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," Lennon-McCartney
I wasn't nearly as enamored by this 1933 eighty-page novella, full of existential black humor, as the Yale prof/lit critic Harold Bloom, primarily because Nathanael West couldn't hide his contempt for all religion nor his scarlet leanings.
As the book begins, an NYC newspaper editor, aptly named "Shrike," assigns an unnamed male newspaper columnist (under the pseudonym "Miss Lonelyhearts") to write an advice column (similar in ilk to "Dear Abby"). Under the collective weight of the genuine agony and life's loads of the advice-seekers, Miss Lonelyhearts begins to suffer severe depression.
At after-hours gatherings, Shrike repeatedly hazes Miss Lonelyhearts, condemning his religion (and his affinity for art) as the "opiate of the masses" and jokes that Miss Lonelyhearts is "an idealist in collision with humanity."
Exacerbating Miss Lonelyhearts' depression is his conviction that his advice column is merely a farce perpetrated on the public. To ease his pain, he turns to drinking, religion, traveling with his fiancee', and an animalistic affair with Shrike's wife.
Miss L meets with a lady, at her insistence, who wrote that her poor crippled husband cannot satisfy her intimate needs. West leaves it ambiguous on whether Miss L's fornication with the lady was driven by a Messiah complex, an ephemeral apostasy, or a mixture of both.
This novella had the feel of a Marxist parable, the explanation of which would require my going far beyond the scope of a simple book review as well as into the bio of the author. That should tell you, at least, that its 80 pages are charged with meaning, latent and patent, which is why I give this novella 4 stars. All things considered, while the book is probably great for book club banter, it was not exactly a pleasure to read.
"I don't really like to stop the show
But I thought that you might like to know
That the singer's going to sing a song
And he wants you all to sing along"
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," Lennon-McCartney
I wasn't nearly as enamored by this 1933 eighty-page novella, full of existential black humor, as the Yale prof/lit critic Harold Bloom, primarily because Nathanael West couldn't hide his contempt for all religion nor his scarlet leanings.
As the book begins, an NYC newspaper editor, aptly named "Shrike," assigns an unnamed male newspaper columnist (under the pseudonym "Miss Lonelyhearts") to write an advice column (similar in ilk to "Dear Abby"). Under the collective weight of the genuine agony and life's loads of the advice-seekers, Miss Lonelyhearts begins to suffer severe depression.
At after-hours gatherings, Shrike repeatedly hazes Miss Lonelyhearts, condemning his religion (and his affinity for art) as the "opiate of the masses" and jokes that Miss Lonelyhearts is "an idealist in collision with humanity."
“Art Is a Way Out. Do not let life overwhelm you. When the old paths are choked with the débris of failure, look for newer and fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering.”
Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathanael West
Exacerbating Miss Lonelyhearts' depression is his conviction that his advice column is merely a farce perpetrated on the public. To ease his pain, he turns to drinking, religion, traveling with his fiancee', and an animalistic affair with Shrike's wife.
Miss L meets with a lady, at her insistence, who wrote that her poor crippled husband cannot satisfy her intimate needs. West leaves it ambiguous on whether Miss L's fornication with the lady was driven by a Messiah complex, an ephemeral apostasy, or a mixture of both.
This novella had the feel of a Marxist parable, the explanation of which would require my going far beyond the scope of a simple book review as well as into the bio of the author. That should tell you, at least, that its 80 pages are charged with meaning, latent and patent, which is why I give this novella 4 stars. All things considered, while the book is probably great for book club banter, it was not exactly a pleasure to read.
December 1, 2017
West was a contemporary of F. Scott Fitzgerald; in fact, the story goes that when he died in a car accident at age 37, he had been rushing to Fitzgerald’s wake, and the friends were given adjoining rooms in a Los Angeles funeral home. There’s more than a hint of similarity to The Great Gatsby here: this is a very American tragedy and state-of-the-nation novel, and it’s remarkable how much it achieves in so few pages. “Miss Lonelyhearts” (never given any other name) is a male advice columnist for the New York Post-Dispatch. His letters come from a pitiable cross section of humanity: the abused, the downtrodden, the unloved. In his role of confessor to the suffering, his boss notes, he’s one of “the priests of twentieth-century America.” Not surprisingly, the secondhand woes start to get him down (“his heart remained a congealed lump of icy fat”), and he turns to drink and womanizing for escape. Indeed, I was startled by how explicit West is in his language and his sexual situations; this in no way feels like a book from 1933. (And you have to love the metaphor “his fat cheeks like twin rolls of smooth pink toilet paper.”) West’s picture of how beleaguered compassion can turn to indifference really struck me, and the last few chapters, in which a drastic change of life is proffered but then cruelly denied, are masterfully plotted. My copy, a 2014 Daunt Books reissue, has been given a cartoon cover and a puff from Jonathan Lethem to emphasize how contemporary it feels.
March 17, 2015
I had a really weird laugh at the end of this one. Something that might be born if 'huh?' and 'haha!' were to copulate.
Miss Lonelyhearts, a man known only by the name of his agony aunt style column, is deeply affected by the letters from his readers. At the beginning of the tale he appears to be on the fence with his ideas on faith and slowly tumbles into a full blown messiah complex. Along the way, Nathanael West's astute observations and sharp wit keep us entertained.
Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in the other. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. Man against nature... the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with the change
The overtly tragic comic tone of this tale is what makes it a win.
Prodded by his conscience, he began to generalize. Men have always fought their misery with dreams. Although dreams were once powerful, the have been made puerile by the movies, radio and newspapers.
And soon after this, he begins his descent down loony land. You'd think this is strange, but from what I have observed in the world, this is exactly how some people cope. Creating a strange alternate reality, with no space for these truths. Absurd. However, when you are not particularly affected by it, you can laugh it all off and Miss Lonelyhearts gives one plenty of opportunity for that.
Miss Lonelyhearts, a man known only by the name of his agony aunt style column, is deeply affected by the letters from his readers. At the beginning of the tale he appears to be on the fence with his ideas on faith and slowly tumbles into a full blown messiah complex. Along the way, Nathanael West's astute observations and sharp wit keep us entertained.
Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in the other. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. Man against nature... the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with the change
The overtly tragic comic tone of this tale is what makes it a win.
Prodded by his conscience, he began to generalize. Men have always fought their misery with dreams. Although dreams were once powerful, the have been made puerile by the movies, radio and newspapers.
And soon after this, he begins his descent down loony land. You'd think this is strange, but from what I have observed in the world, this is exactly how some people cope. Creating a strange alternate reality, with no space for these truths. Absurd. However, when you are not particularly affected by it, you can laugh it all off and Miss Lonelyhearts gives one plenty of opportunity for that.
May 7, 2021
Διάβασα το «Ο δεσποινίς ‘μοναχικές καρδιές’» (υπέροχος τίτλος βιβλίου, βρίσκω). Έπειτα, διάβασα το σχόλιο του H.Bloom επί του βιβλίου. Εν συνεχεία, διάβασα την κριτική του Φώτη. Μετά, κοίταξα με στοχαστικό ύφος τον ορίζοντα, αλλά ειλικρινά δεν μπορώ να του βάλω παραπάνω από τρία (με αξάν Ιάσονα Τριανταφυλλίδη, οκ, βίντατζ αποτυχημένο χιούμορ).
[Ωστόσο, αντιλήφθηκα την ιλαρότητα της υπόθεσης του βιβλίου. Τον Μις Λόνλιχαρτς θα τον θυμάμαι σαν μια αποτυχημένη ενσάρκωση σύγχρονου σωτήρα για τον κάθε πικραμένο, που τσιμπήθηκε τελικά και αυτός από την ίδια του την ουρά. Δεν κατάφερα όμως ποτέ να κατέβω σε ενδότερες στιβάδες σημαινόμενων κλπ. Επίσης, σε άλλα νέα, το έγραψε 30 χρονών και έφυγε άδοξα στα 37 σε αυτοκινητιστικό καθοδόν για την κηδεία του Φ.Σ.Φιτζέραλντ. Θεωρείται σημαντικός Αμερικανός συγγραφέας. Στα υπόψιν και το "Άγριο Χόλυγουντ" για το μέλλον. Οι εκδόσεις Αστάρτη άστα βράστα.]
[Ωστόσο, αντιλήφθηκα την ιλαρότητα της υπόθεσης του βιβλίου. Τον Μις Λόνλιχαρτς θα τον θυμάμαι σαν μια αποτυχημένη ενσάρκωση σύγχρονου σωτήρα για τον κάθε πικραμένο, που τσιμπήθηκε τελικά και αυτός από την ίδια του την ουρά. Δεν κατάφερα όμως ποτέ να κατέβω σε ενδότερες στιβάδες σημαινόμενων κλπ. Επίσης, σε άλλα νέα, το έγραψε 30 χρονών και έφυγε άδοξα στα 37 σε αυτοκινητιστικό καθοδόν για την κηδεία του Φ.Σ.Φιτζέραλντ. Θεωρείται σημαντικός Αμερικανός συγγραφέας. Στα υπόψιν και το "Άγριο Χόλυγουντ" για το μέλλον. Οι εκδόσεις Αστάρτη άστα βράστα.]
August 8, 2018
While reading my last book, The Man in the High Castle, a character was asked if he read "Miss Lonelyhearts"(ML) by Nathanael West which he replied he never read that story, so he could not tell the Asian couple the meaning of it. After having read this I bet the Asian couple were in a kind of culture shock. I googled (ML) & it was a real book published during the Depression, 1933, so of course I had to read this short story to find out what made Philip K. Dick mention it in his works. I love reading & finding another book that looks interesting is like finding a buried treasure. I know that there was a 1958 movie with Montgomery Clift called "Miss Lonelyhearts" which I plan on seeing someday. I have a feeling the movie is going to be kid's play compared to this dark book. ML is classified as a black comedy but there was nothing funny about this book. He is a satirist which is what I would say his intent in ML. Society & religion are the brunt of this jabs. Nathanael West was a author & screenwriter for Hollywood. One film he collaborated on was Frank Capra's "You Can't Take it with You". You get a feeling right off how dark & perverse this book is right away with the extremely sad letters written to the Dear Abby of this story, "Miss Lonelyhearts". The letters are desperate pleas for advice in difficult heart wrenching situations. You find out right away that ML is a man who is not know as such. During his time writing the column, he becomes more cynical & helpless to give the advice needed for these people. It is quite strange throughout the book that this male is called Miss, which gives a bizarre feeling & I kept having to tell myself the facts about his sexuality. His father is a preacher which brings many issues about God & Christ that he has not resolved. Some reviews state that he wanted to be Christ but what I interpreted is his wanting to help & be as good as Christ which his temperament kept thwarting. He was quite mean & abusive at times throughout the book & kept trying to walk the straight path. It starts with ML feeling quite depressed about what to do with all these sad souls & that his efforts are useless. His newspaper editor is continually ridiculing ML quest for his want of Christian behavior. How can he give advice when his life is messed up & he keeps making the wrong decision. One of these transgressions comes back to haunt him. The main theme is finding your way to a life that gives one peace with man & God, whatever the difficulties are in life. When I was reading this early on I thought of John Steinbeck & Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Steinbeck for his juvenile thoughts about sex in his writings yet Steinbeck's characters a more uplifting crowd & Burgess for the brutality, meanness, sexual assault & pleasure for the act of violence. I thought it interesting that when reading some reviews they paralleled Steinbeck & West in their preoccupation with sex. West died in a car crash with his young wife in 1940. He was 37 & she was 26 years old. His friend F. Scott Fitzgerald died unexpectedly a day prior. They were waked in the same funeral home in adjoining rooms. After finishing reading this kind of seedy story I was happy to say in the end that it did have a deep meaning even though it was unsettling at times almost like a modern book with less graphics & no foul language but I am glad I read it! One thing I love about older books you get an idea of the times in a sense on what is written & read by the public.
May 27, 2022
حين تقدم نصائح ذات طابع روحاني ديني وأنت غير مؤمن أصلا .
كارثة الكوارث على مقدم نصيحة قبل أي أحد.
يا
يأخذنا الآنسة القلوب الرحيمة:
صحفي يكتب في عمود يومي لنصح والوعظ والارشاد.
لكنه يتعرض لمواقف من نوع خاص ....
أمام نهر الحياة الاستهلاكية وتشئي الانسان
ليس للمرء الا الايمان كي يشد من همته كي يحيا.
الايمان بمفهومه الشامل .
أن تؤمن بنفسك و
تنفض انهزام و تتقدم .
12/décembre/19 🌸
A la maison 😊
كارثة الكوارث على مقدم نصيحة قبل أي أحد.
يا
يأخذنا الآنسة القلوب الرحيمة:
صحفي يكتب في عمود يومي لنصح والوعظ والارشاد.
لكنه يتعرض لمواقف من نوع خاص ....
أمام نهر الحياة الاستهلاكية وتشئي الانسان
ليس للمرء الا الايمان كي يشد من همته كي يحيا.
الايمان بمفهومه الشامل .
أن تؤمن بنفسك و
تنفض انهزام و تتقدم .
12/décembre/19 🌸
A la maison 😊
June 11, 2020
I guess I will write a review, but all it can possibly contain is a list of what I dislike.
The way the book is described in the Audible book description made me think it might be interesting! To be fair, I will tell you what they say:
“Miss Lonelyhearts is Nathanael West's second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.”
“In the story, Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights. He also suffers from the pranks and cynical advice of his editor at the newspaper, named "Shrike", which is also a type of predatory bird. Miss Lonelyhearts tries several approaches as a way out of this depression (including religion, escaping to the countryside, and sex) but only ends up more confused.”
“The general theme of the novel is one of extreme disillusionment with Depression-era American society, a consistent theme throughout West's novels. However, the novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony. The novel can be treated as a meditation on the theme of theodicy, or the problem of why evil exists in the world. The novel's protagonist is psychologically overwhelmed by his perception of this evil, which is treated as an explanation for his increasingly desperate psychological condition. Although the characters of Miss Lonelyhearts are grotesque caricatures, the periodic letters sent to Miss Lonelyhearts, which describe real people with real insoluble problems, serve to ground the novel's Expressionism in reality.”
With the first paragraph I have no complaint.
The second paragraph is fine too, until its last sentence. The reader never feels Miss Lonelyheart’s depression nor his confusion; we are merely told that he is depressed. His confusion does not show. His behavior is erratic and violent from start to finish. His thoughts are perceived by me as being purely nonsensical. I never once related to either the man nor his situation. The story is more about him and little about the dire circumstances of those writing to him. This prevents one from feeling empathy for them. Neither can we relate to his reaction to their problems if we do not intimately feel the problems of the letter writers.
Look at the first sentence of the third paragraph. In talking just about his stupid concerns and behavior, one is given little perception of the problems wracking Depression-era American society! The third paragraph continues to cause me trouble—I see no humor at all in the telling, and not the “clever sense of humor and irony” spoken of! The theological reasoning is full of holes and just plain crazy. I do agree that the “characters of Miss Lonelyhearts are grotesque caricatures.”
The language employed is lean to the extreme. We are told he does that, and she does that. It felt to me as if I were reading stage directions for a play, not a novel!
I felt nothing for any character, disliked the writing style. Ideas are poorly expressed. The story is utterly boring.
The book begins with a short introduction to both this novella and Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust. It told me nothing significant. The book concludes with a short biographical piece in which John Sanford speaks of his abbreviated friendship with Nathanael West. Both read as fillers, rather than real content.
The audiobook is narrated by L.J.A Ganser and Kevin Pariseau. I have no complaints, but the reading is nothing special either. Three stars for the narration.
The way the book is described in the Audible book description made me think it might be interesting! To be fair, I will tell you what they say:
“Miss Lonelyhearts is Nathanael West's second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.”
“In the story, Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights. He also suffers from the pranks and cynical advice of his editor at the newspaper, named "Shrike", which is also a type of predatory bird. Miss Lonelyhearts tries several approaches as a way out of this depression (including religion, escaping to the countryside, and sex) but only ends up more confused.”
“The general theme of the novel is one of extreme disillusionment with Depression-era American society, a consistent theme throughout West's novels. However, the novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony. The novel can be treated as a meditation on the theme of theodicy, or the problem of why evil exists in the world. The novel's protagonist is psychologically overwhelmed by his perception of this evil, which is treated as an explanation for his increasingly desperate psychological condition. Although the characters of Miss Lonelyhearts are grotesque caricatures, the periodic letters sent to Miss Lonelyhearts, which describe real people with real insoluble problems, serve to ground the novel's Expressionism in reality.”
With the first paragraph I have no complaint.
The second paragraph is fine too, until its last sentence. The reader never feels Miss Lonelyheart’s depression nor his confusion; we are merely told that he is depressed. His confusion does not show. His behavior is erratic and violent from start to finish. His thoughts are perceived by me as being purely nonsensical. I never once related to either the man nor his situation. The story is more about him and little about the dire circumstances of those writing to him. This prevents one from feeling empathy for them. Neither can we relate to his reaction to their problems if we do not intimately feel the problems of the letter writers.
Look at the first sentence of the third paragraph. In talking just about his stupid concerns and behavior, one is given little perception of the problems wracking Depression-era American society! The third paragraph continues to cause me trouble—I see no humor at all in the telling, and not the “clever sense of humor and irony” spoken of! The theological reasoning is full of holes and just plain crazy. I do agree that the “characters of Miss Lonelyhearts are grotesque caricatures.”
The language employed is lean to the extreme. We are told he does that, and she does that. It felt to me as if I were reading stage directions for a play, not a novel!
I felt nothing for any character, disliked the writing style. Ideas are poorly expressed. The story is utterly boring.
The book begins with a short introduction to both this novella and Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust. It told me nothing significant. The book concludes with a short biographical piece in which John Sanford speaks of his abbreviated friendship with Nathanael West. Both read as fillers, rather than real content.
The audiobook is narrated by L.J.A Ganser and Kevin Pariseau. I have no complaints, but the reading is nothing special either. Three stars for the narration.
March 18, 2018
Signorina Cuorinfranti Miss Lionelyhearths, anche se la traduzione esatta sarebbe Signorina Cuorisolitari, un titolo ammiccante e birichino che gioca sul doppiosenso facendo pensare a universi rosa e un po’ sciocchini e invece sorprende chi legge per quanto le pagine nascondono.
Miss Lionelyhearths in verità è un Lui, un giornalista che tiene in una rivista una rubrica di posta del cuore molto seguita, in attesa di compiti più formattanti e ambiziosi per la sua carriera.
Sono soprattutto donne a scrivergli; nelle loro lettere usano un linguaggio basico, gergale spesso infantile che Nathanael West è molto abile a mantenere nel testo: mariti violenti, la difficoltà di arrivare a fine mese, problemi di sentimenti e di sussistenze, specchio dell’America della Grande Depressione, che rendono quelle esistenze difficilmente vivibili.
Miss Lonelyhearths comincia questo compito con levità e le sue risposte sono vaghe un po’ degli slogan, come quando si prova a confortare qualcuno ma si è abbastanza lontani o estranei ai suoi problemi, lui stesso è scettico di fronte a ciò che scrive in riscontro.
Ma accade, come in alcune professioni dove si ha a che fare più con le persone e meno con i numeri o le cose, che Miss Lonelyhearths si renda conto, non solo di non riuscire ad essere di alcun valido aiuto a che gli scrive, ma il dolore altrui diventa lo specchio del suo e lo fa precipitare giù nello stesso gorgo di afflizione delle sue mittenti, e come un Cristo sulla croce si carica delle sofferenze di quell’umanità dolente.
Il contagio è avvenuto perché la contiguità con il dolore autentico sortisce sempre due possibilità: o anestetizza o uccide.
E se prima
Quel che accadeva nel mare non interessava affatto alla roccia
ora la roccia è diventata friabile, e ogni richiesta d’aiuto toglie uno strato a quel cuore gelido groppo di grasso rappreso e comincia a pulsare, e sanguinare.
Solo tre stelle però perché alcuni passaggi sono descritti con uno stile un filo troppo grottesco per la mia sensibilità, inoltre il libro risulta essere un po’ slegato.
Ironia della sorte la vita dell’autore si infranse in un incidente stradale proprio quando finalmente aveva preso la sua svolta positiva.
Miss Lionelyhearths in verità è un Lui, un giornalista che tiene in una rivista una rubrica di posta del cuore molto seguita, in attesa di compiti più formattanti e ambiziosi per la sua carriera.
Sono soprattutto donne a scrivergli; nelle loro lettere usano un linguaggio basico, gergale spesso infantile che Nathanael West è molto abile a mantenere nel testo: mariti violenti, la difficoltà di arrivare a fine mese, problemi di sentimenti e di sussistenze, specchio dell’America della Grande Depressione, che rendono quelle esistenze difficilmente vivibili.
Miss Lonelyhearths comincia questo compito con levità e le sue risposte sono vaghe un po’ degli slogan, come quando si prova a confortare qualcuno ma si è abbastanza lontani o estranei ai suoi problemi, lui stesso è scettico di fronte a ciò che scrive in riscontro.
Ma accade, come in alcune professioni dove si ha a che fare più con le persone e meno con i numeri o le cose, che Miss Lonelyhearths si renda conto, non solo di non riuscire ad essere di alcun valido aiuto a che gli scrive, ma il dolore altrui diventa lo specchio del suo e lo fa precipitare giù nello stesso gorgo di afflizione delle sue mittenti, e come un Cristo sulla croce si carica delle sofferenze di quell’umanità dolente.
Il contagio è avvenuto perché la contiguità con il dolore autentico sortisce sempre due possibilità: o anestetizza o uccide.
E se prima
Quel che accadeva nel mare non interessava affatto alla roccia
ora la roccia è diventata friabile, e ogni richiesta d’aiuto toglie uno strato a quel cuore gelido groppo di grasso rappreso e comincia a pulsare, e sanguinare.
Solo tre stelle però perché alcuni passaggi sono descritti con uno stile un filo troppo grottesco per la mia sensibilità, inoltre il libro risulta essere un po’ slegato.
Ironia della sorte la vita dell’autore si infranse in un incidente stradale proprio quando finalmente aveva preso la sua svolta positiva.
February 13, 2015
that was....not what I expected.
There is a section where Shrike effectively tortures Miss Lonelyhearts with narrative, telling story after story of other lives, possible lives, while Miss Lonelyhearts lies in bed suffering from an illness that may or may not be entirely spiritual.
Then you've got the letters to Miss Lonelyhearts, themselves also narratives of other lives, of suffering lives, though these are nothing like what Shrike puts together, the slick, generic productions he uses to torment and to distance himself from humanity, his dead pan.
So that's going on.
Then, there are these little moments within the writing itself at which I just marvelled. The fact that Miss Lonelyhearts has no name, and each step of the narrative reinforces the strangeness of this, his role not his identity:
When Miss Lonelyhearts quit work, he found that the weather had turned warm and that the air smelt as though it had been artificially heated. He decided to walk to Delehanty's speakeasy for a drink. In order to get there, it was necessary to cross a little park. He entered the park at the North Gate and swallowed mouthfuls of the heavy shade that curtained its arch. He walked into the shadow of a lamp-post that lay on the path like a spear. It pierced him like a spear.
What can you even say about writing like that?
There are others: the description of the battle against entropy, the attacks of the inanimate objects, small, brilliant little asides that had me continually wondering at this tiny little book.
Depite what goodreads tells you, I actually read this from a volume of four collected works of Nathanael West; I think I'll be coming back for the others.
There is a section where Shrike effectively tortures Miss Lonelyhearts with narrative, telling story after story of other lives, possible lives, while Miss Lonelyhearts lies in bed suffering from an illness that may or may not be entirely spiritual.
Then you've got the letters to Miss Lonelyhearts, themselves also narratives of other lives, of suffering lives, though these are nothing like what Shrike puts together, the slick, generic productions he uses to torment and to distance himself from humanity, his dead pan.
So that's going on.
Then, there are these little moments within the writing itself at which I just marvelled. The fact that Miss Lonelyhearts has no name, and each step of the narrative reinforces the strangeness of this, his role not his identity:
When Miss Lonelyhearts quit work, he found that the weather had turned warm and that the air smelt as though it had been artificially heated. He decided to walk to Delehanty's speakeasy for a drink. In order to get there, it was necessary to cross a little park. He entered the park at the North Gate and swallowed mouthfuls of the heavy shade that curtained its arch. He walked into the shadow of a lamp-post that lay on the path like a spear. It pierced him like a spear.
What can you even say about writing like that?
There are others: the description of the battle against entropy, the attacks of the inanimate objects, small, brilliant little asides that had me continually wondering at this tiny little book.
Depite what goodreads tells you, I actually read this from a volume of four collected works of Nathanael West; I think I'll be coming back for the others.
March 30, 2022
این کتاب رو به عنوان عیدی از نشر قطره گرفتم و واقعا خوشحالم.چون کتاب قشنگی بود.من ازش خیلی خوشم اومد.به عنوان اولین کتاب سال 1401 واقعا لذت بردم.میس لونلی هارتز فکر میکردم زن باشه ولی یه آقای جالبه که توی یه روزنامه به سوالات و نامه های خواننده ها جواب میده و بهشون کمک میکنه ولی این آدما کم کم وارد زندگیش میشن و زندگی شخصی و اجتماعیشو از نزدیک تحت تاثیر قرار میدن.میس لونلی هارتز رو بخونین.پشیمون نمیشین..
December 29, 2014
[4.5] Such finely-wrought internal thought; clumsiness, sometimes brutality in the external world. (Plenty of reviewers seem to disagree with the former: many give this short novella either 2-3 stars for having an awful, unrelatable protagonist - I've read plenty nastier - or 5 for all-round brilliance.) It's a close-third person narrative, which, during pauses, I recalled as a first-person, such was its access to one character's inner life whilst the rest remained as if behind a pane of frosted glass. Miss Lonelyhearts is a young American 1930s newspaperman, straight, reluctantly assigned to write an advice column. He is referred to throughout only by this name, the queerness/dragginess of which charmed me so much that it was always an effort to remember how different (emasculating, demeaning) it was intended to sound, and would have to most readers at the time and for decades afterwards. The name probably made me more kindly-disposed towards the character than if he'd just been called plain old Fred or Joe.
The paper's policy to fill the column with religious hokum rather than genuine responses means that he's powerless to help the people who write in. Not only does Miss L lack vocation and aptitude, he's more helpless than people in most helping professions, where funding at least allows for sticking a band-aid over a compund-fracture of a life. Street scenes sound like Breughels; these are Great-Depression families in desperate need of decent health care, jobs, social security, social workers, therapists, better domestic violence laws and better housing. “You are plunging into a world of misery and suffering , peopled by creatures who are strangers to everything but disease and policemen. Harried by one, they are hurried by the other . . . “Pain, pain, pain, the dull, sordid, gnawing, chronic pain of heart and brain. There's not a lot you could merely *say* that would make a difference.
He too considers the job a joke, but after several months at it, the joke begins to escape him. He sees that the majority of the letters are profoundly humble pleas for moral and spiritual advice, that they are inarticulate expressions of genuine suffering. He also discovers that his correspondents take him seriously. For the first time in his life, he is forced to examine the values by which he lives. This examination shows him that he is the victim of the joke and not its perpetrator. Lurching between moments of Zen-like serene empathy and a raging chaos, he applies some traditionally American means of attempting to cope, including Evangelical Christianity, booze and violence - as well as fever-dreams, a nice little trip to the country, three shambolic affairs* (this is a milieu between westerns and Mad Men in which the men are brutal, the women ill-educated, sex often bartered or coerced, and there seems no hope these people could live companionably in the way many modern couples expect). And most of all he makes a complete mess of what we'd now call professional boundaries.
If you've ever worked with deprived communities the readers' letters are horribly recognisable - not enough has changed. (Other than policing and perhaps medicine and teaching, this encompasses lots of jobs which rarely find their way into fiction, despite huge potential for interesting stories.) You may even once have had a similar colleague with rather unsympathetic attitudes whose presence in the work was baffling, and who made more realistic versions of the mess Miss L does.
The prose is well honed; a great deal of meaning and feeling is mysteriously enshrined in few words, not necessarily unusual ones. However, the editor's, Shrike's (the shrike, the butcher bird which impales its prey on thorns) rants can be hyperbolic and surreally hilarious: God alone is our escape. The church is our only hope, the First Church of Christ Dentist , where He is worshiped as Preventer of Decay. The church whose symbol is the trinity new-style: Father, Son and Wirehaired Fox Terrier.
I'd seen the title 'Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West' plenty of times before, and had thought it stood for something twee-er and wryer, about letters from society ladies, not the poor and desperate. (For some reason I had also associated West's name with Herman Melville, and I only just noticed that he wrote The Day of the Locust which must be the basis for the John Schlesinger film.) Stylistically this turned out to be something of a hidden gem, though in subject a very rough one.
* A review of a different volume of West's works suggests that the chapters parody pulp novels; the structure makes more sense seen that way.
The paper's policy to fill the column with religious hokum rather than genuine responses means that he's powerless to help the people who write in. Not only does Miss L lack vocation and aptitude, he's more helpless than people in most helping professions, where funding at least allows for sticking a band-aid over a compund-fracture of a life. Street scenes sound like Breughels; these are Great-Depression families in desperate need of decent health care, jobs, social security, social workers, therapists, better domestic violence laws and better housing. “You are plunging into a world of misery and suffering , peopled by creatures who are strangers to everything but disease and policemen. Harried by one, they are hurried by the other . . . “Pain, pain, pain, the dull, sordid, gnawing, chronic pain of heart and brain. There's not a lot you could merely *say* that would make a difference.
He too considers the job a joke, but after several months at it, the joke begins to escape him. He sees that the majority of the letters are profoundly humble pleas for moral and spiritual advice, that they are inarticulate expressions of genuine suffering. He also discovers that his correspondents take him seriously. For the first time in his life, he is forced to examine the values by which he lives. This examination shows him that he is the victim of the joke and not its perpetrator. Lurching between moments of Zen-like serene empathy and a raging chaos, he applies some traditionally American means of attempting to cope, including Evangelical Christianity, booze and violence - as well as fever-dreams, a nice little trip to the country, three shambolic affairs* (this is a milieu between westerns and Mad Men in which the men are brutal, the women ill-educated, sex often bartered or coerced, and there seems no hope these people could live companionably in the way many modern couples expect). And most of all he makes a complete mess of what we'd now call professional boundaries.
If you've ever worked with deprived communities the readers' letters are horribly recognisable - not enough has changed. (Other than policing and perhaps medicine and teaching, this encompasses lots of jobs which rarely find their way into fiction, despite huge potential for interesting stories.) You may even once have had a similar colleague with rather unsympathetic attitudes whose presence in the work was baffling, and who made more realistic versions of the mess Miss L does.
The prose is well honed; a great deal of meaning and feeling is mysteriously enshrined in few words, not necessarily unusual ones. However, the editor's, Shrike's (the shrike, the butcher bird which impales its prey on thorns) rants can be hyperbolic and surreally hilarious: God alone is our escape. The church is our only hope, the First Church of Christ Dentist , where He is worshiped as Preventer of Decay. The church whose symbol is the trinity new-style: Father, Son and Wirehaired Fox Terrier.
I'd seen the title 'Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West' plenty of times before, and had thought it stood for something twee-er and wryer, about letters from society ladies, not the poor and desperate. (For some reason I had also associated West's name with Herman Melville, and I only just noticed that he wrote The Day of the Locust which must be the basis for the John Schlesinger film.) Stylistically this turned out to be something of a hidden gem, though in subject a very rough one.
* A review of a different volume of West's works suggests that the chapters parody pulp novels; the structure makes more sense seen that way.
February 23, 2017
What the hell just happened?? I wanted to love this book. I bought this book because a sign from a bookseller recommended it by saying, "the only book Jane and I have ever agreed on." Oh. I see the problem now. I assumed they agreed it was great. Clever bookseller. Alas, no. He probably loved it. As Flannery O'Connor is on record loving it. As Harold Bloom (aka literary tastemaker who revived this book) is on record saying it's his favorite work of American prose fiction. There are some lovely turns of phrase in here (this is why I'm writing this and trying to decide if it's one or two stars), but ultimately this book is undercooked. The characters are going through hugely dark stuff and I could give too shits because the writer never gets us close enough to anyone to care. At the end of the book, a deeply unsatisfying ending that falls off a cliff, I circled back to read Harold Bloom's introduction and made it through about three pages. It was all, this character is the devil, and this character is Job, and there's the problem for me right there. He's reading with his head while I read heart first. I can see that Harold Bloom is probably right and this poor author who died in a tragic car accident in 1940 has created this short little piece of intellectual brilliance that ultimately fails for me because it doesn't reach my sappy little heart. Somewhere Harold Bloom is pitying me and all readers like me, I suppose. And I guess if Miss Loneleyhearts is what the Harold Blooms and Flannery O'Connors of the world hold up as top marks, then my future as a writer is very grim indeed. Perhaps I'm just grumpy because I'm turning forty and I'm tired of being told which books are good and which are bad when my heart is perfectly capable of telling me what holds up and what falls flat. And my heart says this book falls very, very flat indeed.
July 10, 2022
I had been hearing about Nathanael West for several years but had never been motivated enough to read his books. When I saw “Miss Lonely Hearts” on a Thursday morning at a bazaar of second-hand items on an esplanade shaded by date palms in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, I decided to add it to my collection, thinking that it might be a classic.
That’s as far as it got until our isolation in Long Island, NY, decades later due to the Covid virus pandemic. It was written as an epistolary story, one of my favorite styles as in Guy de Montherlant’s “Les Girls”, but it was off-beat and not really that much of an epistolary novella (a long short story really).
West wrote this book in a style which for me was kind of disjointed, having to do a lot with frustrated readers of a daily newspaper in which he was writing a column and his compassion and at the same time disdain for them.
I believe that the Post-WWII period of writing in the 1950s and 60s (West died in 1940) may have been influenced by his writing, reflecting sexual frustration perhaps because of the advancement of women in the workplace and their new lease on freedom or the aimlessness that follows the excitement of war or the threat of annihilation or the diminution of society’s belief in God, or increasing mechanization, or dozens of other things.
You get this hollowness in reading American writers such as Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Erskine Caldwell, John Updike and others—all competent, but who leave a reader yearning for a ray of hope or joy but not leaving much for hungry readers.
I may read West’s “Day of the Locust”, which was a companion piece of Lonelyhearts, but probably not, especially during these days of massive death and suffering everywhere.
That’s as far as it got until our isolation in Long Island, NY, decades later due to the Covid virus pandemic. It was written as an epistolary story, one of my favorite styles as in Guy de Montherlant’s “Les Girls”, but it was off-beat and not really that much of an epistolary novella (a long short story really).
West wrote this book in a style which for me was kind of disjointed, having to do a lot with frustrated readers of a daily newspaper in which he was writing a column and his compassion and at the same time disdain for them.
I believe that the Post-WWII period of writing in the 1950s and 60s (West died in 1940) may have been influenced by his writing, reflecting sexual frustration perhaps because of the advancement of women in the workplace and their new lease on freedom or the aimlessness that follows the excitement of war or the threat of annihilation or the diminution of society’s belief in God, or increasing mechanization, or dozens of other things.
You get this hollowness in reading American writers such as Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Erskine Caldwell, John Updike and others—all competent, but who leave a reader yearning for a ray of hope or joy but not leaving much for hungry readers.
I may read West’s “Day of the Locust”, which was a companion piece of Lonelyhearts, but probably not, especially during these days of massive death and suffering everywhere.
August 2, 2015
I have no idea what to make of this. I am just going to back away slowly from it.
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