Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange
Abstract
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)
