The Nathanael West Project

ALIVE in London!

I'm pleased (actually beside myself) to report that Jay Parini, the noted writer and critic and editor of both The Norton Anthology of Autobiography and The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature has written a beautiful review in the February 2012 issue of Literary Review, London.

Jay Parini says of ALIVE INSIDE THE WRECK:

“In this fresh, elegant biography by Joe Woodward—the first in four decades—West comes alive, a strange young man on the prowl, a crazy fool, a fantasist.

 “Alive Inside the Wreck seems to imitate, to a degree, the prose of West, with its short sentences and its neon-lit realism…Some of the criticism on display is quite remarkable, as when Woodward  describes The Day of the Locust as “ a novel of displacement, of displaced people.

 “This is a remarkably good and succinct biography, well worth reading.  It adds considerably to our understanding of West, taking on the fabled machinery of Hollywood itself, which often seems more like a troubled state of mind than an actual place or industry.”

To read the full review online go to the Literary Review.

Also, for recent news on the book you can go to www.orbooks.com.

My great thanks.  Long live Nathanael West (well his novels, anyway).

 

 

 

 

 

Joe @ The Huffington Post

JOAN DIDION -- LATE IN LIFE

By Joe Woodward

@ The Huffington Post 1/10/12

Excerpt of review of Didion's Blue Nights

"Old age in America is a humorless state of spent energies—a time-desert laced with lost economic and political power and long hours in medical waiting rooms skimming back issues of National Geographic.  Old age in America is a commercial loop stuck on the pros and cons of Medicare Part B and unmeasured time in wall-papered kitchens trying to get child-proof caps off orange prescription bottles.  Old age in America is simply the loss of youth.

The American canon on old age is as unreliable and overstuffed as America itself.  It does not contain the truth.  Rarely, save an occasional AARP advertisement in a magazine or television pitch for “Boost,” the energy drink, do “old people” appear in media at all.  When they do appear, they are most often interested in “eating right” and “exercising” and playing ball with their grandchildren in comfortable shoes and ironed khakis.  There must be more!  

Read more at... The Huffington Post

 

 

The Day of the Locust: Faye Greener

The Day of the Locust

Chapter 3

The novel, right up to the end, was called The Cheated by West.  It wasn't perfect, he realized, but nothing else seemed as true and right.

Certainly "cheated" fit Faye Greener.  Faye, his heroine-grotesque, takes up the whole of chapter 3 and prepares us for one of the magnificent sequences in the book--Claude Estee's party.

"She was a tall girl with wide, straight shoulders and long, swordlike legs.  Her neck was long, too, and columnar.  Her face was much fuller than the rest of her body would lead you to expect and much larger.  It was a moon face, wide at the cheek bones and narrow at the chin and brow.  She wore her 'platinum' hair long, letting it fall almost to her shoulders in back...

"She was supposed to look drunk and she did, but not with alcohol.

"Her invitation wasn't to pleasure, but to struggle, hard and sharp, closer to murder than to love.  If you threw yourself on her, it would be like throwing yourself from the parapet of a skyscraper.  You would do it with a scream.  You couldn't exactly rise again.  Your teeth would be driven into your skull like nails into a pine board and your back would be broken.

"He managed to laugh at his language, but it wasn't a real laugh and nothing was destroyed by it."

And onto the party he goes....

NATHANAEL WEST R.I.P

On December 22, 1940 at five minutes to three, Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney were in a car accident in the middle of the California desert.  We know the time because the Highway Patrol recovered Eileen's broken watch at the scene.

They had been married less than year.  West had completed two masterworks, Miss Lonelyhearts and, recently, The Day of the Locust.  He was at work on his fifth novel, for which Random House had paid him a modest advance of $250.00.    

They had been happy.  They had been.

I begin his biography, ALIVE INSIDE THE WRECK, this way:

"The accident happened at five minutes to three, two days before Christmas: December 22, 1940.  Rain puddles stood in the dips of the road from a morning storm.  Broken thunderclouds lingered over the flat California desert.  Nathanael West was on his way home.

"The Woody station wagon held West's new wife Eileen and their liver-colored pointer, Julie.  As he crossed the intersection where Route 111 runs into Interstate 80, West and Eileen collided with the Dowless Family--a husband and wife and two year-old daughter.  West was traveling north out of Mexico after a weekend hunting trip.  His car was full of dead quail and duck, the legal limit.  Four shotguns rattled loose on the back seat."

Nathanael West R.I.P.

Locust: The House He Lived In

Chapter 2 (above is the apartment building in Hollywood where West worked on Locust)

"The house he lived in was a nondescript affair called the San Bernardino Arms.  It was oblong three stories high, the back and sides of which were plain, unpainted stucco, broken by even rows of unadorned windows.  The facade was the color of diluted mustard and its windows, all double, were framed by pink Moorish columns which supported turnip-shaped lintels.

"Despite the sincere indignation that Abe's grostesque depravity aroused in him, he welcomed the company.  The little man excited him and in that way made him feel certain of his need to paint.

"He had first met Abe when he was living on Ivar Street, in a hotel called the Chateau Mirabella.  Another name for Ivar Street was "Lysol Alley," and the Chateau was mainly inhabited by hustlers, their managers, trainers and advance agents.

West was excited by what he saw here in California.  It was a strange and beautiful subject, he knew.  Indeed, the "grostesque depravity aroused him."  Amen.

 

I Believe ... Nothing Says Christmas Like The Day of the Locust

The Day of the Locust

Chapter 1

Is Hollywood West's subject, or does he mean to say--Hollywood has made a subject of us?

Yes.

West's masterwork begins as it ends--with a shrill, in exhaustion, with a view of things as they are and as they are not.  A forest of signs, and so on.

 

"Around quitting time, Tod Hackett heard a great din on the road outside his office.  The groan of leather mingled with the jangle of iron and over all beat the tattoo of a thousand hooves.  He hurried to the window.

"An army of cavalry and foot was passing.  It moved like a mob; its lines broken, as though fleeing from some terrible defeat."

"Stage Nine--you bastards--Stage Nine!" he screamed through the small megaphone.

"Yes, despite his appearance, he was really a very complicated young man with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes.  And 'The Burning of Los Angeles,' a picture he was soon to paint, definitely proved he had talent.

"It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that are.  But it is easy to sigh.  Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous."

This last, short paragraph of chapter 1 provides a core, a focus to West's overarching summation of California, Hollywood, us.  "It is easy to sigh."  And so on.

P.S.  The photo above is the Parva-Sed-Apta Apartments in Hollywood--where West began his Locust.

 

 

 

Big Fun @ The Book Party

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                            THANK YOU to everyone who joined us last night to launch ALIVE INSIDE THE WRECK.

We had a crowd of about 50.

Everyone was welcomed by Diana Ljungaeus, Exec. Director of the Los Angeles Press Club and then I was introduced by Boris Dralyuk, Noir Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Also, at the event from LARB...Evan Kindley, Managing Editor, Julie Cline, Senior Non-Fiction Editor and others.

In the crowd was Judith Freeman, author of The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved. Also, Stephanie Swengel, Vice President of Production, Fox Animation Studios, and many others.

I want to thank the friends and family that came out for the evening.  And, too, all the work of Fern Diaz and her crew at O/R Books.

O/R Books Rules!!  Joe.

Book Party Free Parking

Tomorrow is the big day--Book Launch Party

Thank you for the kind words and look forward to it.

A reminder.  7:00 - 9:00  p.m. / Thurs. Dec. 8

LA Press Club is at 4773 Hollywood Blvd.

Corner of Hollywood Blvd. and N. Berendo Street

Across from Barnsdall Art Park/

Sign outside Center for Inquiry

FREE PARKING behind building /

Turn into N. Berendo St.

See you there.  Joe.

 

 

A Cartoon Review of ALIVE INSIDE

ALIVE INSIDE THE WRECK featured in comic form in The Rumpus

This is really something special.  I feel very lucky that the book interested Kevin Thomas at The Rumpus.net.  It is a perfect reading of Alive Inside the Wreck.  It is a nod to West's own love of cartoons and graphics as a boy -- and to his claim that he composed Miss Lonelyhearts like a cartoon -- each chapter is a frame that both stands alone, but influences the whole.  I'm going to smile all day today.  Try and stop me.  Hope you do too.  Joe.

RAVE REVIEW in The Telegraph (UK)

Martin Chilton, Digital Culture Editor

at The Telegraph in London

offered a rave review today

of my new biography

ALIVE INSIDE THE WRECK.

Chilton says, "...the book serves as a vibrant reminder of a talened and somewhat neglected author.  West's wonderfully imaginative and slightly disturbed books are still in print--even in eBook editions--and hopefully Woodward's interesting account will persuade people to try the novels."

The Telegraph                Read the full review here.