The Novel-to-Film Translatability of Satire in the The Day of the Locust and Wise Blood

It comes as no surprise that the critical work focusing on Nathanael West\u27s The Day of the Locust (1933) and Flannery O\u27 Connor\u27s Wise Blood (1952) sheds much light on the motifs satirical and otherwise at work in the novels. However, the film versions of the novels, those by legendary directors John Schlesinger (1969\u27s Midnight Cowboy) and John Huston (1941\u27s The Maltese Falcon), respectively, remain open to investigating how satire works within them. On the one hand, for instance, the popular vein of criticism regarding West and his Hollywood novel seems focused by the Frankfurt school of thought-mostly Adorno, and to a lesser extent, Benjamin (Roberts; Simon; Strychacx). On the other hand, the criticism regarding O\u27Connor tends to focus on the ambiguities of the novel-some critics, for example, read O\u27Connor\u27s Wise Blood theme as the necessity of acknowledging one\u27s spiritual heritage (Cook, 199)

“You Only Have Time to Explode’”: Nathanael West’s Novels, Mass Media, and Illusory Dreams

This thesis analyzes Nathanael West\u27s novels with a focus on his treatment of commodification and mass media in 1930\u27s American society. West’s works are situated in the midst of the Market Crash, the Great Depression, the rise of cheap consumer commodities, the transition to sound-film from silent film, the rise of Hollywood studios, and the proliferation of mass media—all of which influence and historicize his novels. In West’s work, mechanical reproduction problematizes the act of communication by rendering it anonymous and circular, never satisfying the desire it promises to fulfill, and with an illusion of reciprocity