Miss Lonelyhearts

This has an excruciatingly bad ten or twelve minute critical introduction. After that comes one of the creepiest well-known works of modern American fiction, read in a way that clouds but does not obliterate the tone and madness of the story. It's hard to understand why so many audiobook narrators read in cartoon-character voices. Oh well. The gist of Miss Lonelyhearts is here.

I bought this novella because I read a piece by Harold Bloom, a renowned and prolific lit critic and a Yale humanities professor, describing why he loves MISS LONELYHEARTS. I wasn't nearly as enamored by this 80-page existential black comedy, primarily because the author, Nathanael West, couldn't hide his contempt for all religion nor his dark-red leanings.

As the book begins, an unnamed 1933 NYC male newspaper columnist (I'll call "ML") has been assigned to write an advice column (similar in ilk to Dear Abby). ML thereafter starts suffering severe depression under the collective weight of the genuine agony and burdens thrown upon him in the "Dear Miss Lonelyhearts" letters of the readers.

At after-hours gatherings, his editor, aptly named Shrike, repeatedly hazes ML, condemning his religion (and art) as the "opiate of the masses" and jokes that ML is "an idealist in collision with humanity."

Exacerbating ML's depression is his belief that the Miss Lonelyhearts column is a big farce perpetrated on the public. To ease his pain, he turns to drinking, religion, traveling with his fiancee', and an affair with Shrike's wife. ML also agrees to meet with a lady who wrote that her poor crippled husband cannot satisfy her intimate needs. West leaves it ambiguous on whether ML'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. All things considered, while the book is probably great for book club banter, it was not exactly a pleasure to read.

Very good look at the time period and the struggles of the people and the despair of so many. Excellent and I hope the rest of West shows up soon. Good and surprising in some ways for the time it was written.