Nathanael West

Nathanael West, pseudonym of Nathan Wallenstein Weinstein (1903-1940), American novelist, born in New York and educated at Brown University. His first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931), the story of a group of odd characters inside the Trojan horse, was not successful. Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), his best-known book, tells of the confrontations between a bitter male advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist and his correspondents. It was followed by A Cool Million (1934), a satire of the moralistic rags-to-riches sagas popularized in the 1890s by Horatio Alger. His last novel, The Day of the Locust (1939), savagely depicts a gallery of grotesques in Hollywood, where West worked as a screenwriter, and is considered by many to be the best novel written about Hollywood.

Although his early death in a car accident limited West's output to four novels, the popularity of his books, as well as his critical reputation, has consistently increased.