Nathanael West: Prophet of Failure

Transcription

Nathanael West: Prophet of Failure
Author(s): M. A. Klug
Source: College Literature, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter, 1987), pp. 17-31
Published by: College Literature
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111719 .
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WEST:
NATHANAEL
PROPHET OF FAILURE
byM. A. Klug
of the post-modernist.
While
the
JNathanael West was the prototype
were still breaking on American
West
first waves of modernism
shores,
a decadence,
a period in which
was already anticipating
literature, along
In his
with the other arts, must pass into posturing
and self-parody.
about the future of art, West
earliest misgiving
found his theme and
This
of misgiving
is the source of his continuing
method.
feeling
and of the obsessive use of parody and burlesque, which were
pessimism
to become
the vehicles of his pessimism. West began with the conviction
artist was necessarily
that the modern
in a conflict
of the
trapped
that must
intellect and the emotions
finally cut him off from his own
sources
as well
as from his audience.
of
internal
He
inspiration
came to see the bankruptcy
a larger
of the artist within
eventually
context
of cultural failure, eroding
to the end of his career, West was
model of spiritual impairment.
every form of human expression. But
to return to the artiste manqu? as the
West's
first failed artist appears
in The Dream
Life of Balso Snell,
where the artist is rent by a schizophrenia
that resembles
the "dissocia
T.
S.
tion of sensibility"
described
Eliot.
in
But
West's
by
diagnosis
have sent in.1 The artist has become
the victim of his own
complications
a
to
which
turned
has
feed
As
itself.
result the artist can
intellect,
upon
never escape the tyranny of his own self-consciousness.
In every gesture
a
of his life and work he becomes
self-conscious
performer. At the same
time he
is condemned
performances.
This
to be the brutally
narcissistic
self-scrutiny
self-conscious
does
not
critic of his own
lead to knowledge
COLLEGE
18
finds the apt metaphor
of a shadow."
John Gilson
of the mind
lost in the study of itself:
but to the "pursuit
for the frustrations
It is as if I were attempting
shadow
want
moves
of
very
with
the
much
LITERATURE
pencil.
tracing
to outline
it; but
it, never
allowing
me
the point of a pencil
to trace with
I am
enchanted
the
to
with
shadow
trace
its
the
is attached
tempting
shadow's
to
shape
the pencil
the
and
and
form.2
he cannot free himself
Because
from his own watchful
eye, the artist
or
to his
cannot
He
release
is emotionally
give expression
incapacitated.
a
them
As
in
into
of
Gilson
without
themselves.
turning
parody
feelings
he must "burlesque
the mystery
the name of the failed artist confesses,
his emotions begin to emerge
of feeling at its source" (27). The moment
over
asserts
control
his consciousness
them, puts them on exhibit,
to
this necessity
them as a part of his literary act. For West
fabricates
was
or
of
the
the
contemporary
feelings
parody
symptomatic
burlesque
from that inarticulate
and
from his own humanity,
artist's
separation
irrational side of his nature that bound him to the collective mass. To
to be able to express his
to this lost portion
of himself,
be restored
the artist must
and literary posturing,
without
emotions
artificiality
overcome
Unfortu
self-consciousness.
his own compulsive
somehow
saw it, the only way to such a restoration was through
nately, as West
release the full
a total surrender to the irrational that would
madness,
but at the same time would destroy
creative power of the imagination
the artist, his tradition and his society.3
artist and
The traditions which have given birth to the contemporary
in his
the accomplices
him are at once
surrounds
the society which
offers him
of his own internal conflict. Tradition
failure and extentions
a mirror of his own consciousness.
no relief from isolation but becomes
of the past that have
him with
mocks
the triumphs
It continually
artist the
the possibilities
of the present. For the paralyzed
exhausted
one
and the
The
themes
done.
it's
all
been
has
but
great
message:
past
to
match
these
out.
all
been
have
roles
attempts
Any
played
great
a
a
at
worst
of
the
trivialization
at
best
is
futile;
repetition,
triumphs
so like Maloney
the writer is left to struggle
the Areopagite
past. And
the martyred
with his Life of Saint Puce,
flea, or like Miss McGeeney
of the
of the biographer,
the
of
to write
the biography
biographer,
the
But not only does
tradition exhaust the
of Dr. Johnson.
biographer
of life itself.
it exhausts
the possibility
of further creation,
possibilities
a
of
becomes
existence
shadow
In its constant
sequence
referential,
cliches
and worn
out poses.
As
Beagle
Darwin
explains:
"I have
spent
NATHANAEL
WEST
19
. . .making
it impossible
for me to tell where literature
my life in books
it be spent in shaving,
ends and I begin"
(47). Every action, whether
love or killing the next door neighbor,
gets tangled in literary
making
and collapses
into parody,
of the
associations
the ironic admission
to the dead faces of the past which have usurped
artist's bondage
the
John Gilson
knows all about these intrusions
that dissolve
the
present.
self: "Some times [his] name is Roskolnikov,
sometimes
it is lago. [He]
never was, and never shall be, plain John Gilson"
(14).
a mocking
Just as the past becomes
the correlative
of the
audience,
so also does society. The artist no longer
artists' own self-scrutinizing,
sees his society as a community
of fellow humans but as an audience
a performance.
To satisfy those "thousands
of sweating,
that demands
into his function.
grimacing,
jeering animals out front," he is subsumed
He has no time for a private
to live
life, even if he had the capacity
one. When
runs off with
his wife
the boarder,
when
the baby gets
he cannot be released
cancer, when he finds out that he has gonorrhoea,
into his feelings. He
is on exhibit before
his neighbors
and before
and he must prepare a face, do his stuff, "dancing,
himself,
laughing,
singing, acting." Even when the curtain comes down and he is alone, he
cannot make
the faces of real grief, but is compelled
by practice and
to
disposition
perform himself before his dressing room mirror
(51). He
on the audience
then turns with a vengeance
that has forced him to
As
John Gilson
has a "natural
it, every performer
puts
perform.
for
his
audience
and
to
excrement upon
"loose
yearns
antipathy"
dump
its collective head." But so long as his hostility
towards his audience
is
to
can
never
his
conscious
control
it
free
him
from
the
burden
subject
as another performance,
of performance;
it can only be expressed
a
ritualized and artificial
rebellion. The audience will tolerate any abuse
so long as it is part of the act. No matter
how much
excrement
John Gilson
of them from the ceiling
of the theater,
drops
they
will gather afterwards
"in the customary
charming groups and discuss
the play" (31).4
John Gilson
and Beagle
be freed from the artist's
Darwin
routines
both
instinctively
that they can
the domination
of
know
only by escaping
If they could somehow "push the whole thing into
the scrutinizing
self and at the same
(28), they could annihilate
insanity"
time emancipate
themselves
from a mocking
tradition and a watchful
audience
that are the embodiments
of their own consciousness.
Both
seek madness
and both fail to find it. Beagle Darwin
ends up choosing
the conscious
mind.
20
COLLEGE
LITERATURE
as the best of all possible roles. But he sees that
to play the mad Hamlet
he cannot will himself
into insanity; he can at best feign it. A part of
is always watching,
is but
him
conscious
that his madness
always
another of his "tear jerker routines"
quest of
(50 ff). John Gilson's
madness
also dissolves
into pretense. He tries to discover
"the Real,"
the natural self that has been displaced by all of his "customary
poses,"
the idiot laugher upstairs, who is the symbol of his
by killing Adolph,
own tormented consciousness
and of that audience without
that watches
and sneers. But not even murder can free John Gilson
from reasons and
a gesturing
out another
roles. As
"ridiculous
Raskolnikov,
playing
he slits his imaginary victim's
throat for "literary reasons"
(19).
Snell
John Gilson,
and Balso
is
failure of Beagle
Darwin,
The Dream Life of Balso Snell
the failure of Nathanael West.
ultimately
a kind of artificial madness.
a willed
It contains
constitutes
spirit of
that would blow up the rotten edifice of literature, destroying
anarchy
and
all the conventional
poses of the artist as well as the tradition
But
of
defiance
him.
the
these
roles
that
forced
audience
energy
upon
even rebellion
in the name
that rebellion,
seeps away in the recognition
is itself a clich?, a literary gesture with
of a purely destructive madness,
saw that he could never
its own tradition and its own audience. West
into feeling that was free of any taint
into the irrational,
release himself
assertion of will. At
and artificial,
of the self-conscious
by a conscious
the same time he saw his only hope of creating an art that went beyond
In
in just such a release into feeling.
a mere
"literary"
performance
is the source of an irony that turns in
first novel this dilemma
West's
could only prove the failure of art
to feed upon itself. West
contempt
story,"
The
by failing at it.
West
Nathanael
resigned
began at a dead end; he never completely
In the three mature novels that were to follow, he saw the
that ground.
In Miss
artist as the representative
exhausted
type of our culture.
that
Locust
he
shows
A
the
Million
and
The
Cool
of
Day
Lonelyhearts,
in
of art is but a symptom of a larger cultural malaise
the moribundity
have failed, all the great
of
themselves.5
Religion
parodies
degenerated
or
a
into a variety
"new Thomistic
dessicates
into
synthesis"
explodes
the American
show of lunatic cults. The national myth,
dream, goes on
is produced
and
Love
of Horatio
tour as a slap-stick burlesque
Alger.
which
all
emotions
the communal
have
forms
of
expression
into
in "tasteful"
directed by impressarios
settings designed by Asa Goldstein
Stein and Juan Gris. Even death
or in the refined ambience of Gertrude
NATHANAEL
21
WEST
in
his last appearance
is a cheap show, with the corpse making
positively
streets everyone
In West's
of Mr.
Interlocutor.
the tuxedo and makeup
patter of a
speaks the formulaic of a dead language or the self-conscious
role:
whore,
journalist,
race-track
tout,
street
car
conductor.
Everyone
moves with the mechanical
gestures of a hopeless
Lonelyhearts
ferocious
bit player: college boy on spree, abused wife, clean Old Man,
is
these
Beneath
first
gestures
dwarf,
"pain, pain, pain, the
cowboy.6
heart
of
brain"
of
chronic
dull, sordid, gnawing,
(53). This pain
pain
in any natural way. When
it threatens to emerge,
can never be expressed
or
self
into
either
the
sufferer
incoherence,
banality,
collapses
another standard article "stamped
The pain is produced,
dramatization.
from the dough of suffering with a heart shaped cookie knife" (1).
as the characters
of West's
three mature
have
Insofar
novels
into two recurrent types who
individual
identities
they can be divided
a kind of national
conflict
that becomes
face each other in a parodie
comic
theatre of the absurd. The dominant
type is seen as a burlesque
as a mark or stooge. This division,
or con-artist,
which
the submissive
inMiss
on a primary pair of characters
in each of the three later novels,
to the schizophrenic
of the exhausted
artist
fragmentation
corresponds
that West
in The
and a scrutinizing-self
into a performing-self
explored
In a broader context
it also corresponds
to
Dream Life of Balso Snell.
or conflict
of the contemporary
the division
artist and his audience,
across his whole
which was to obsess West
lifetime. Those
characters
centers
who
assume
the
role
of
con-artist
are
all
performers,
self-conscious
turn every situation
into a theatrical, move
into
actors, who instinctively
to dazzle,
the spotlight,
and proceed
and abuse
entertain, manipulate,
sees this type as the embodiment
whoever
is in attendance. West
of the
one
or
creative
and
he
it
with
associates
urge gone astray
usually
to express the opinions,
another of the institutions
that are supposed
mass media,
the arts, politics,
beliefs,
feelings of the community?the
or marks
are all personifications
of that
stooges
religion. West's
collective mass of the inarticulate,
who are incapable of creating their
or beliefs or of independently
own opinions
their emotions.
expressing
move
at all, they must find models
In order to
to provide them with the
of expression.
Like the people
attitudes,
language, gestures,
letters to Miss Lonelyhearts,
they must be given a reason for
It is this need which draws them to the con-artist, makes
them
being.
and exploitation.
But if the con-artist
setups for his mockery
sadistically
the stooges
victimizes
that are drawn to him or that he seeks out, the
appropriate
who write
22
COLLEGE
LITERATURE
between
the two types
is by no means
relationship
simply one of
unilateral
West's
and in their
stooges demand performances
exploitation.
solicit abuse.
very passivity
Peter Doyle
and Homer
Lern Pitkin,
the best
Simpson
provide
of West's
is the purest,
the most
literal
stooge. Lern Pitkin
examples
he is without
version. A parody
of the American
innocent,
motive,
or character. There
direction
is nothing
inside him to be expressed.
In
to be put to work,
he waits to be formed,
to be sent on
his emptiness,
He has no life; he merely gets caught in episodes,
mission.
somebody's
in one
the same. A sequence of con-men
and they are all pretty much
or
turns
to
him
As
he
another
take
guise
picking
pieces.
approaches
he finds his true vocation. He hires on as a stooge
total dismemberment,
for two burlesque
comics. His role is a simple one; he stands around
and Robbins,
while
the team of Riley
of
through "Fifteen Minutes
Furious
dismantle
his
false
Fun,"
him, appropriating
hair,
publically
false teeth, false eyes, false leg. Lern does not really mind. He needs a
to do on his own. The mob of "puspockets
job. He can find nothing
are
out
front
"convulsed
with joy" (A Cool Million,
248
and fleapits"
is a travesty of their own existence,
but it is a
ff.). Lem's mutilation
audience
they will tolerate any
part of the act, and like John Gilson's
amount of loose excrement being dumped on them so long as it is part
of the show.
an
or more
Peter Doyle,
like Lern, is a personification,
accurately
no
mass
man
has
the
who
of
function
part
beyond
being
impersonation,
one of the crowd, moving
the streets in a
of an audience,
through
for any illusion of life, any kind of
violence"
"dream-like
looking
how bogus.
Like Lern he is "crippled,"
any part no matter
feeling,
a bundle
that do not quite fit
of fragments
destroyed,"
"partially
to say it
to say, almost no language
together. He has almost nothing
the more
incoherent
insist upon expression,
his emotions
and gesture as he is of
of manner
is an impoverished
exhausts
words. He knows how to shake hands, but that pretty much
his social repetoire. When he is called upon to act, he clumsily slips into
the "gas
an imitation
the "fool,"
the "husband,"
of "the sport,"
with.
The more
he becomes.
He
inspector." As Shrike says, he can know nothing of "humanity";
he
he is "humanity"
45), and true to his compulsion
(Miss Lonelyhearts
an
an
of
how
is looking for something?a
answer,
message,
explanation
to keep on moving
his crippled
to be, how
brings him
leg?which
meter
around
to Shrike
and Miss
Lonelyhearts.
NATHANAEL
WEST
23
Like Lern and Peter Doyle, Homer
in The Day of the Locust
Simpson
mass
is of that anesthetized
that mostly
waits and watches.
He begins
some minimal
each day by struggling
a
towards
level of sentience,
can never quite
who
raise himself
Lazarus
from the dead. Totally
he accepts
the half-dozen
of a lifetime as they are
decisions
passive,
no
to
him
He
others.
has
given
by
character, plays no role, but clings to
a protective
a
that
he
and in
routine,
job,
performs
"mechanically"
detachment"
is a "hotel
"impersonal
{Day of the Locust,
88). He
as
a
meter
is
Beneath
his stupid,
clerk,"
just
Doyle
"gas
inspector."
an
flesh
in
emotions
"enormous
wave"
and
up
surge
heavy
occasionally
a "refuse of feelings."
then fall back upon themselves,
Homer's
(87-88).
hands give off the only outward
sign of an inner being. They are the
some unconscious
victims
of
and
to life, trying
residual
to
urge
to do, some gesture to perform.
remember or discern something
In the
meanwhile
sits waiting
Homer
for the Greener's
to knock upon his door
the gift of Miracle
Salve, "the polish without
peer or parallel"
bearing
(101).
are West's
off against
these marks
all of them
Played
con-artists,
identifiable.
the
blowhard
of A
easily
Shagpoke
Whipple,
politician
Cool Million,
is the purest example.
For Shagpoke
all the world
is a
who releases a chain reaction
soap box. He is a compulsive
speechifier,
of adages,
clich?s and instantly converts everyone
slogans, and political
he meets
into an auditor or a bit-player
in his act. He begins by putting
Lern Pilkin on exhibit, but finally, as the great American
he
dictator,
recruits the whole nation as a supporting
cast. He even manages
to sell
the costumes:
for the American
at rock bottom
Fascist
"everything
West uses the type in a more subtle
prices"
(189). InMiss Lonelyhearts,
the hero, Miss
way. Several characters
slip in and out of it including
But
actor is, of course, Willie
the
consummate
Shrike.
Lonelyhearts.
Like Shagpoke,
he is incapable of talking. He delivers monologues
and
"dead
in a style of the "moving-picture
routines
performs
pan"
comedians"
(6). His routines all have the same end, to reduce existence
to a joke, a parody of life. Like Shagpoke,
he automatically
assumed
authority. He is "the Boss" and imposes a subsidiary role on everyone,
them as a "ventriloquist
does his doll"
(6). But he differs from
on one important point. Beneath
his dead pan and elaborate
Shagpoke
he preserves
the smallest
of an emotional
gestures,
vestige
life; he
using
suffers.
pain;
This suffering has to be kept a secret. Shrike can never express
can only pretend
to express
it by doing a burlesque
of a
he
24
COLLEGE
LITERATURE
fellow" with a broken heart, while
indicating "with little nods
"simple
and winks"
that the whole thing is a joke (21).
For the setting of his final novel,
The Day
West
of the Locust,
of
chose
that
American
reservoir
great
bogus
appropriately
Hollywood,
cast
The
includes
dwarves,
Indians,
touring
performers.
cowboys,
of other stand-ins. But the team of
and a varied assortment
Eskimos,
and Greener
steals the show. For them acting is not so much a
Greener
are all
as an alternative
of life. As Faye puts it, "we Greeners
vocation
crazy . . . The theatre is in our blood"
(98), and indeed she is inflicted
curse to pose and posture. Her casual gestures are so
with a hereditary
so formal,
elaborate,
of
be the mannerisms
She apparently
realizes
in a
from bad models
to be real. So far as
so "completely
that they appear to
meaningless"
a "dancer
rather than an affected
actor"
(94).
is false, but, having "learned
that her method
she does not know how to pretend
bad school,"
she is impelled by the
she has any motivations,
she can assume control, gain a
need to be stared at. Before an audience
of her own actions. Faye's
mechanical
and artificial possession
father,
suffers from a terminal case of the family disease. His face has
Harry,
into a mask
that will no longer register the subtler modula
hardened
out his life
tions of feeling but can only ape the extremes. He measures
like birds
in bar room recitals, complete with sound effects, "twittering
like a pack of hounds when
to herald the dawn of Love and yelping
how Evil Fate ever pursued him"
(120). At his first brush
describing
to his
with mortality,
resists
the
of
by clinging
nothingness
pull
Harry
honest
of
selves
well-meaning,
Harry,
"poor Harry,
phony
repetoire
a faithful
a model
a good
father,
husband,
humble,
deserving,
can
to
a
he
be dying.
friend
Christian,
(91). Dying,
only pretend
loyal
curtain groan" and skillfully uses the pillow of
He groans a "second-act
his death
suffers,
self-conscious
bed
but
to offset
his
his "agonized
(119). Like Shrike, Harry
profile"
never
can
but
released
into anything
be
suffering
performance.7
two recurrent character
types play out the routines
Together, West's
humans and take their shape
of an exhausted
culture. They are failed
in The Dream Life of Balso
that West dissected
from the artist manqu?
parts of the artist's divided self and
They represent the conflicted
artist
Like the exhausted
combat with his audience.
his mock
to spontaneously
live out their feelings and
they have lost the capacity
or in a
can only
in dead mechanical
themselves
gestures
express
is a
Just as the tradition
and self-mocking
self-conscious
parody.
Snell.
reenact
NATHANAEL
25
WEST
can only
artist, who in his frustration
Standing rebuke to the exhausted
so
a
constant
is
the
to
also
historical
West's
it,
travesty
past
reproof
ideal of the American
failed society. The informing
that
past disparages
imitation
freedom
of
self-made
cheap
sought by Shagpole Whipple's
man. The ivory Christ spiked on Miss Lonelyheart's
barren walls calmly
censures
the degenerate
forms of modern
life. The ghostly
spiritual
man
at
of
the
whole
of
Western
howls
the edges of the
history
laughter
"dream
where
the
the Greek
dump,"
Egyptian
sphinx,
Hollywood
are
and
the
of
Battle
Waterloo
in
canvas,
reproduced
"plaster,
temple,
lath and paint" (132).
Just as West's
artist is constantly
seeking revenge upon the audience
so also do West's
that has turned him into a compulsive
performer,
characters come together in a ritualized hostility and violence.
Shagpoke
Lern and then leads the costume
disassembles
rebellion
that
Whipple
brings him to power. The petty sadism of Shrike is mimicked
by Miss
and all the other disillusioned
idealists who do not know
Lonelyhearts
"how else to revenge themselves"
but by trying to transfer their pain
onto some passive victim. The flavor of violence
is strongest in The Day
but like almost everything
else in the novel it is artificial.
of the Locust,
The "messianic
the fanatic religious
cultists
is
rage" that boils within
real enough, but it is never publicly expressed
in its wild anarchic purity.
sex crimes,
It is translated
into the "lynchings,
murders,
explosions,
love nests,
wars"
wrecks,
fires, miracles,
revolutions,
(179) that are
as an antidote
served up by the newspapers
and the movies
to boredom
or into the petty meanness
and persecution
that the Greeners,
Abe
Earle
and Tod Hackett
visit upon
each other. The
Kusich,
Shoop
out of West's
that explodes
violence
is destructive
characters
in intent
a self-consciously
and effect, but it remains artificial,
staged violence
that springs from imitation
A
of
the
national
rage.
part
act, it is as
unreal and yet as demeaning
and as painful as the slapstick
scourging
that Lern Pitkin receives from Riley and Robbins.
a phony
It constitutes
and Beagle
just as the insanity of John Gilson
rebellion against
the domination
of the mind.
In this atmosphere
of faked-out
faked-out personal
conflict
emotions,
and
two of West's
faked-out
social
Miss
rebellion,
characters,
rebellion
Darwin
against society
is a counterfeit
and Tod Hackett,
real.
Lonelyhearts
try to become
descent
into madness
that is feigned by John Gilson
are freed of the tyranny of the
and for a moment
to posture and perform. At that
by the compulsion
that
They complete
and Beagle Darwin
conscious mind and
moment
they come
26
COLLEGE
LITERATURE
into their own destruction.
Miss Lonelyheart's
quest is
out
to
and
He
sets
ambitious.
defeat
simple
profoundly
profoundly
to
stone.
that
him
the
force
of
death
has
turned
and
his
world
entropy,
He sees that he can only oppose
this death by freeing his emotions,
the
source of energy within.
For him the proof
frozen
of the human
to feel rests in the figure of the crucified Christ. He can only
capacity
into
life and also
his emotions
Christ's
From the start he
by undertaking
passion.
is impossible,
that to
realizes that a "sane view of this Christ business"
release himself
into passion he will have to surrender all of the defenses
the hysteria
into hysteria. Although
of the conscious mind and plunge
and will
of passion
with "a
is "natural"
infuse the "dead world"
resists it with the numb terror
semblance of life" (9), Miss Lonelyhearts
of a corpse at the first trembling of the resurrection.
uses the same dodge
To evade his emotions, Miss Lonelyhearts
that
resort to. He pretends
to feel. He goes through
all of West's
characters
his gestures are "too appropri
of rage but unconvincingly;
the motions
actor"
ate, like those of an old-fashioned
(12). He tries the role of
know
in his caresses"
lover, but there is "too much method
(24) just as there
is in his blows. Finally he plays at being Christ with a false security and
a false humility
So
that are the easy victims of his own self-laughter.
he fails to "tap the force
tries to be the messiah,
long as he consciously
in his heart" and delivers parodies of Christ in stage screams and empty
sees as false.
rhetoric that he immediately
him
that carries
into his
the pathway
finds
Miss
Lonelyhearts
in his dreams. Through
the course of the novel he continually,
emotions
of sleep. While
these solitary
returns to his bed and the sanctuary
are
to
the
from
be
withdrawals
appear
they
reality,
exactly
journeys
and
inarticu
into
that
irrational
Miss
lead
Lonelyhearts
They
opposite.
he first
late self that lies unused beneath his conscious
gestures. When
to his bed, his censoring
follows him into sleep,
conscious mind
still imposing the sentence of performing
upon him. He dreams that he
in the
theatre"
is on "the stage of a crowded
leading his audience
takes
prayer that Shrike has taught him (9). By the time the novel
mocking
and
inwards to a point where the memory
ends he has dreamt himself
the lessons of Shrike can no longer follow. His heart, which was a
lump of icy fat" (18), burns with the fever of a "mentally
"congealed
that
(56). It is the fever heat of a passion
The
is
most
of
his
"inner
cells
the
real,
body."
passion
through
into life; for
real. It stirs the dead "black world of things"
hysterically
unmotivated
violence"
radiates
NATHANAEL
WEST
27
an instant it endows Miss Lonelyhearts
with the power of the creator.
a magician
of life who can touch the emptiness
He becomes
into being.
In his full creative
of mind
and feeling
power his internal division
and "his
with God"
dissolves
into a single rhythm,
identification
is
His heart becomes
the "one heart, the heart of God. And
completed.
to put the one heart
he moves
his brain was likewise God's"
(57). When
it is with virginal conviction,
and the one mind
into action,
unpolluted
any self-consciousness,
any ironic reserve, the pure
by any ambivalence,
and of the mad man.
It carries him
conviction
of the true believer
in the full "charge"
of life.8
directly to his destruction
The Day
lacks the psychological
of the Locust
intensity of Miss
in the broader
but what
is lost here is gained
social
Lonelyhearts,
In his last novel West makes
context
that it encompasses.
his deepest
into the relationship
of the decadent
artist to a decadent
exploration
culture that he began in The Dream Life of Balso Snell. Tod Hackett
is
one of that conspiracy
at once a performer,
of actors who betray their
one of that mass of
audience with counterfeit
feeling, and a watcher,
and betrayed who demand
their own exploitation.
Like Miss
anonymous
in a state of exhaustion,
he begins
beneath
the weight of
Lonelyhearts
an incipient "morbid
Bored by his own facility
in solving
apathy."
and color,"
he considers
of composition
up his
"problems
giving
like Miss Lonelyhearts
he is weary
painting while still in art school. Also
a joke of life.
of his own cynicism
that would
revenge itself by making
He knows he can only melt his inertia in the heat of some emotion and
searches for that heat in the California
of Faye Greener.
In Faye Greener Tod finds the symbolic
of Hollywood
embodiment
and of that decadent America
that shines with the promise of life and
betrays the very hope that it arouses. He pursues Faye as a lover, just
as he pursues America
as an artist, to be awakened
from his physical
to be "galvanized
into sensibility"
heaviness,
(141) and to arouse in turn
a corresponding
But he demands
emotion.
of Faye and of his culture
the one thing that they can least give or receive?feeling.
Serving them,
a set designer
in their corruption,
he is implicated
becomes
for their
a
as
as
an
In
shows.
his
frustration
lover and
artist he turns to
phony
If he cannot arouse Faye to love or even
fantasies of violent
revenge.
smash her "self sufficiency,"
lust, he must
destroy her absolute control
at the very least terror; by making
her feel something,
by making
at the very least rage. These
same motives
himself
feel something,
are
in his painting,
revealed
"The Burning
of Los Angeles."
It represents
28
COLLEGE
LITERATURE
to release some uncontrolled
that will
yet purgative
hysteria
the whole
or
country. He does not simply want to prophesy
record the impending
wants
to
he
to
set in
apocalypse;
it,
precipitate
that "awful
anarchic power"
of "messi
motion,
through his painting,
anic rage" that is waiting
behind the empty faces in the crowd. From
the very start, Tod senses that "only dynamite would be of any use"
his need
consume
to light the fuse and set off
is meant
(61) against his world. His painting
that explosion
of repressed
emotion
that will bring down
the dead
world.
that can be accomplished
Tod is immersed
in a madness
that
the energy
of creation
and of destruction.
Whereas
Miss
Lonelyheart
journeys into his own private realm of the irrational, Tod is
drawn
into the reservoir of unexpressed
the collective
hysteria within
mass. Once he loses all hope of reaching the feelings of Faye Greener
and of
that American
for which
she stands,
he
is literally
and
absorbed
into
the
mob
of
the
"bored
and
anonymous
symbolically
whose
emotions
in collective
violence.
disappointed"
betrayed
explode
When Tod first sees the gathering
crowd outside Kahn's Persian Palace
he is terrified by its mindless
Theatre,
power to set off the destruction
he had prophesied
with
such "a strong feeling of satisfaction"
(118).
the last few pages
of
the novel,
to retain
he struggles
Through
a sense of a direction,
an objective.
He also is tempted to
self-control,
surrender to the power of the surging mass and let "himself
be swept
His conflicting
forces"
urges are matched
along."
by the "opposing
within
the mob which finally turn him "like a grain between millstones"
he washes ashore at the edge of the crowd, he has reached
(181). When
comes to in his dreams. He has found his
the place Miss Lonelyhearts
creative source and is able to envision and in his imagination
work to
we
the completion
of his imagined
are
which
told
earlier
painting,
Before
releases
"definitely
proved he had talent" (61). He has also found the source of
own
his
In his painting
destruction.
he gives himself
to the irrational
tide of feeling
that will drive
the "united
front of screwballs
and
to destroy America,
screwboxes"
just as it has driven Tod to destroy
himself.
police
The loud, siren wail of his voice
car is the sound of that destruction.
as he
is carried
off
in the
Miss
and Tod Hackett
discover
the final
Together,
Lonelyhearts
it is the same paradox
human paradox;
that prevents
the rebirth of art.
To reach the source of their creative power they must pass into their
own destruction.
The moment
they are able to express their unchecked
NATHANAEL
WEST
29
from within
and without.
in action,
The
they are doomed
can
never
after
it
them
but
that
surrounds
emotion,
hungers
society
It can accept and reward almost
its actual
tolerate
any
expression.
so long as it is a performance.
even hostility,
But
pretense of feeling,
sees that the free expression
of emotion
is the ultimate
the mob
It
of
the
Grand
declaration
independence.
deposes
Inquisitor?the
to a conspiracy
binds
each
individual
self-consciousness?which
of
means
actors
of
the
last
between
artificial
the
and
gestures,
exchange
culture. Without
spectators of an exhausted
why, without
understanding
Peter
clear
the
of
inarticulate
any
intention,
agent
Doyle,
humanity,
must
He gives and demands
more
than
Lonelyhearts.
destroy Miss
can
on
not
it
is
turns
But
bear.
that
Miss
humanity
simply society
or Tod. They are sufficient
to their own destruction.
In
Lonelyhearts
emotions
a tyrant
the controlling
consciousness,
rebelling against
they overthrow
that insures their own survival. They are left in the freedom
of the
no
even
to
not
themselves.
one,
insane, belonging
In the destruction
of Tod and Miss Lonelyhearts,
West
reveals his
not
about
the
for
restoration
chances
the
of
only
continuing
pessimism,
the possibility
artist but
toward
the individual
of rebirth
for an
At the end of each novel society remains in a state
exhausted America.
of emotional
and spiritual ruin, its individual members
reduced to bogus
and passive
each other
in a ritualized
spectators
performers
facing
was right in concluding
if West
life. Now
that
parody of communal
failure of feeling, he leaves us with a
America was suffering a collective
come
How
the condition
fundamental
did
about? West,
question.
with dramatizing
concerned
the condition
rather than with
primarily
to answer this question.
But the answer or
it, never attempts
explaining
answers
to it must
in our cultural
lie deep
about
the
assumptions
of
it is expressed.
and how
selfhood
At
the risk of
meaning
I suspect
that the emotional
failure of American
oversimplification,
as
must
is
West
it
somehow
be
connected with our
society
portrayed
by
see
as
a
to
the
self
creation. Americans
have
predisposition
personal
that the self is defined or achieved
through a
perpetual
struggle of the will against external reality. The freedom to be
someone depends upon the power of the will to exert a personal control
the self in the anonymity
upon a hostile world that threatens to dissolve
of a mass fate. The popular American
notion of the self-made man rests
assumed
characteristically
upon
just
these
reality. Anyone
about
the relationship
of the self and
assumptions
who might
feel inclined to sneer at the concept of the
30
COLLEGE
LITERATURE
in mind
self-made man
of the thought
should keep
how much
and
tradition of Western
culture have fed that popular
idea: the aristocratic
the Rennaissance
tradition
of self-perfection,
ideal of the genius,
the
the existential
Romantic
ideal of the hero,
of the selfhood.
concept
in an almost unbroken
Across
the past century, our novelists
line have
same
this
the self
is a personal
worked
from
that
assumption
in defiance
of the real. They
have also
achievement,
accomplished
in their
their fictional
characters
and unfortunately
shown,
through
the
disastrous
of
that
which
consequences
lives,
assumption,
begins and
of the individual from the body of
ends by insisting upon the alienation
and at the same time imposes
of
upon him the burden
humanity
so
our
It
is
little
wonder
that
of
and
many
reality.
ordering
controlling
of the past three decades have followed
this quest for the self
novelists
into
exhaustion.
most
of our writers
have
the conflict
of the
While
emphasized
individual and society that result from the pursuit of selfhood, West
is
more
with
within
the individual
that
the internal division
concerned
in opposition
not only to
results from it. He shows us the conscious-self
a chaotic external reality but to a chaotic internal reality?the
emotions.
can only be manifested
A kind of super-ego,
the conscious-self
through
in a
the emotions.
It is generated
the control
that it imposes upon
a
the
act of artifice,
and
continual
it
continual
stronger
performance,
and reduces existence
to
the emotions
the more
it subverts
becomes,
routine
conscious
the conscious-self
emotional
reality
or
the alienation
that is devoid of reality. The internal disassociation
the emotions
and
the consequent
and
loss
describes
is the psychological
that West
equivalent
of
of
of
of the individual
from social reality.
It
separation
or
of the consciously
fabricated
from the same opposition
springs
As
and the chaotic
artificial
real, and it ends in the same exhaustion.
he sees the
and Tod Hackett,
indicates through Miss Lonelyhearts
West
in the release of emotions
from the
only escape from this exhaustion
The price of this release is the disintegra
control of the conscious-self.
tion
of
the
conscious-self.
or suicidal
suicidal madness
In West's
economy
the
alternatives
are
self-repression.
NOTES
1Many
West's
critics have discussed
fiction.
For
example
the conflict
see
Victor
of
Comer
intellect and the emotions
cher o. Nathanael
West:
in
the
Ironie Prophet.
An
West:
Interpretive
into
Madden.
Fla.:
Deland,
1982:
The
23-25.
1973:
Northwestern
UP,
Life of Balso Snell: Journey
Cheaters
and
Jay Martin.
Ed.
the Cheated.
West:
Nathanael
1970: 94-95. Kingsley Widmer. Nathanael
Art of his Life. New York:
Boston:
West:
Nathanael
the Microcosm."
Evanston:
Study.
"The Dream
1971: 49-50, 94. Gerald Locklin.
David
1964: 12-13, 18ff, 64, 162. James F.
Syracuse: Syracuse UP,
Nathanael
Light.
31
WEST
NATHANAEL
The
West.
46-47.
24,
2 The Complete Works of Nathanael West. New York: 1957: 16. References
are to this edition.
to The Dream Life of Balso Snell and A Cool Million
References toMiss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust are to the New
Directions paperback edition. New York: 1969. All subsequent references will
be given in the text.
3 For
of West's
discussions
Irving
41, 62ff.
4 For detailed
Novelist."
5 For
see
West
6 Many
critics
have
characters.
For
"Nathanael
West
Review
9.
discussed
and
the
10 (1976): 225-34.
3-12,
1972:
25,
Letters
and
cultural
Ried:
see
fiction
and
7-8,
Light:
Ried:
of
The most
the
in
Martyred
in West's
see
fiction,
46-47.
the
and
119
91-97,
Theatre
and
26ff.
decandence
the artificiality
see
example
"Dead
2:
and
and Widmer:
161-63,
17-18,
in his
irrational
Carbondale:
Baxter.
Review
artistic
of
the
express
Novels.
of the relationship of the artist and his audience
Charles
Coast
discussions
Ried:
West's
information
fiction
West's
to
attempts
Nathanael
Malin.
Absurd."
detailed
of West's
theatricality
ff.
Frank
Southern
analysis
W.
Shelton.
Humanities
is to be found
in
Widmer,
passim.
similar
interpretations
71-78.
Widmer:
7 For
8 For
Widmer:
a
similar
interpretation
of
the
of
Greeners
the
conclusion
see
Comerchero.
of Miss
138-39,
Lonelyhearts
31-32.
and
see

Nathanael West: Prophet of Failure

Transcription

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