Nathanael WEST (West Nathanael)

(1903-1940)
West (pseudonym of Nathan Weinstein, Weinstein) was born October 17, 1903 in New York. Did not finish high school with a fake certificate, he enrolled at Tufts University, and almost immediately transferred to Brown University - also with a fake certificate, allowing him to prematurely conclude the formation in 1924. After a year in Paris, he returned to New York and began working as receptionist, while working with U.K. Williams in the magazine 'Contact'. In 1935 he moved to California, where he spent the last years of life, striving as a scriptwriter. In April 1940 he married Eileen McKenna. Killed in a car accident near El Centro (pc. California) December 23, 1940.
Subject novel Dreams Balsa Snell (The Dream Life of Balso Snell, 1931) - the loss of illusions; this comic fantasy. West's masterpiece is Miss Lounliharts (Miss Lonleyhearts, 1933). Under this pseudonym (letters. 'one grieving') wrote a hero, a journalist, a leading newspaper in a dialogue with readers, comes to him every day of their letters, 'chopped dough troubles cordate with a knife'. The first time he responds to them consolation, over which he laughs inwardly, but then, increasingly coming into the role of Christ, begins to sympathize with their respondents. Compassion, gradually acquiring the character of madness is doing more harm than good. The history ends with martyrdom of the hero: it accidentally shoots a cripple, whom he tried warmed.

Round million (A Cool Million, 1934) - a parody of 'novels of success', in which a young man because of luck and a strong grasp of gaining a place in the sun. Trying to fortune, Lemuel Pitkin suffers one disaster after another.

Day of the Locust (The Day of the Locust, 1939) - The tale of Hollywood. The central character, Todd HцІchst im Odenwald, a painter, who became an artist film, cinema treats capital as a city of facades, deforming the souls of its inhabitants - and the filmmakers themselves, and zamorochennyh viewers.