Written in 1933 by Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts is a black comedy about the Depression - a man's inability to cope with the tragedy of life around him, turning to alcohol and falling into delusion. As in his most famous novel, The Day of the Locust, this is a somber, dark tale.
An unnamed character accepts the job of 'Miss Lonelyhearts', answering letters of the lovelorn for a newspaper, ostensibly as a joke, but reading the anguished letters of people's crises begins to haunt his mind. The woman who is beaten and loses her baby, the child who is raped, the drunken spouses - all trying to survive the lack of jobs, food, and money. West includes these letters for the reader but without responses. Drinking to dull the heartache, Miss Lonelyhearts begins to see himself as a Christ figure, reading confessions and dispensing absolution - the Miss Lonelyhearts being the priests of twentieth-century America. He begins an affair with his bosses wife, another with a woman who writes to meet him in person, the wife of a cripple who she doesn't love. Through alcohol or delusion, the more desperate the character he falls in with, the greater his righteous vision of a redeemer.
This is a short but powerful novel, immersed in the Christ image. Miss Lonelyhearts finds religion the only way to make sense of, or block out, the extreme disillusionment that consumes him. This is intense and raw - putting a woman in her place by violence or rape is accepted and West uses every kind of old-timey racist slur, many that have lost their power for modern readers who won't even know what it means. In tone, this reminded me of Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses Don't They?, revealing the hopelessness of the Depression, although not to the degree West has written. That it was published in 1933 is surprising - like John Rechy or Charles Bukowski, Nathanael West is certainly an unparalleled writer.
This was filmed in 1958 starring Montgomery Clift - lighter, sanitized, with a happy ending. It has also been adapted for an earlier film, a play and an opera.
My other reviews of Nathanael West:
1933 / Tradeback / 185 pages
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