"Miss Lonelyhearts" by Nathanael West

A lyrical novella from the author of The Day of the Locust.

Miss Lonelyhearts is a male agony aunt for a newspaper who is going through a crisis. You can't read so many letters from so many unhappy people without it affecting you. His personal life is one of speakeasies and sexual frustration and he seems to identify with Christ. In one segment which seems to refer to Abraham's intended sacrifice of his son and also to the identification of Jesus as the Lamb who sacrificed himself for our sins, Miss Lonelyhearts dreams of going into a meadow with a lamb to sacrifice it; it gets away but later Miss Lonelyhearts finds it and kills it.

It has been described as ironic because Miss Lonelyhearts both offers advice and needs it, and because art is condemned within a work of art, and because Miss Lonelyhearts identifies with Christ even though he drinks illegally and fights and commits adultery. It could be read as a humorous novel but I didn't find it very funny. The overall tone is one of disenchantment. But at the bottom of his heart Miss Lonelyhearts believes that each of us is special.

There are some wonderful descriptions:

• “He entered the park at the North Gate and swallowed mouthfuls of the heavy shade that curtained its arch. He walked into the shadow of a lamp-post that lay on the path like a spear. It pierced him like a spear.” (Miss Lonelyhearts and the Dead Pan) The spear-piercing is, I presume, another reference to the crucified Christ whose side was pierced by a lance as he hung on the cross.
• “The grey sky looked as if it had been rubbed with a soiled eraser ... Only a newspaper struggled in the air like a kite with a broken spine.” (Miss Lonelyhearts and the Dead Pan)
• “He heard the wave-against-a-wharf smack of rubber on flesh.” (Miss Lonelyhearts on a Field Trip)

Selected quotes:

• “How odd the world is ... a world of doorknobs.” (Miss Lonelyhearts and the Lamb)
• “He remembered Betty. She had often made him feel that when she straightened his tie, she straightened much more.” (Miss Lonelyhearts and the Fat Thumb)
• “The stone shaft cast a long, rigid shadow on the walk in front of him. He sat staring at it without knowing why until he noticed that it was lengthening in rapid jerks ... It seemed red and swollen in the dying sun, as though it were about to spout a load of granite seed.” (Miss Lonelyhearts and Mrs Shrike)
• “He knew that in return for an ordinary number of kisses, he would have to listen to an extraordinary amount of complaining.” (Miss Lonelyhearts and Mrs Shrike)
• “You dedicate your life to the pursuit of pleasure. No over-indulgence, mind you, but knowing that your body is a pleasure machine, you treat it carefully in order to get the most out of it.” (Miss Lonelyhearts in the Dismal Swamp)
• “Crowds of people move through the street with a dream-like violence.” (Miss Lonelyhearts Returns)
• “Men have always fought their misery with dreams.” (Miss Lonelyhearts and Mrs Shrike)

The novel is referenced in The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick. It has been adapted into an opera and a play for the theatre and also made into a movie (three times). 

December 2024; 110 pages

First published in the USA in 1933

My edition published by Daunt Books in 2014

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God