Doug wrote: Some connections were made a little while back
between West's writings and other works, maybe with some
mention of Charles Willeford. Without giving away too much,
I'd point out that the end of the Woman Chaser seems to
echo
(at least in my mind, maybe because I was reading them too
closely together)
the end of The Day of the Locust.
******** I snipped the details you added about West's life,
but they were interesting. I've been pulling biographical
information from short online articles and not bothering to
verify much of it. The ambiguity in his college education is
interesting.
West was not a successful author. Some people have noted that
perhaps part of the problem was that his work didn't fit into
a comfortable slot, or genre. Mario said that West's work
followed in a Kafka-like tradition. I bought a nice cheap
trade paperback of collected Kafka stories to see if I could
see the connection. Although I haven't read them yet, the
intro gives me the idea that the common theme is alienation
and insanity in a world that's somewhere between totally
bizarre
(Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and West's "Balso Snell") and just
plain strange (Kafka's "Penal Colony" and West's "Day of the
Locust").
Incidentally, my statement that West was not successful is
not meant to imply that he is a bad writer. I don't much care
for him, but I don't consider popularity to be the deciding
factor in whether an author is good or not.
miker
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