Miss lonelyhearts

Yesterday started Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts which surprisingly I'd never read - a short novel almost a novella by today's standards w v short chapters each of which I think begins w words Miss lonelyhearts - eg ml and the fat thumb. Premise of ml is awesome - a social isolate has newspaper job as columnist writing advice for the sad and lovelorn. Many possibilities for irony and for development of character west very well read and a slight allusion lets us know that he's thinking of bartleby in his main character unnamed and called only ML. Many religious allusions as well and it's absurdly easy to cal ML a christ figure. There must be more significance to this one who gives others hope but is alienated and in despair himself. All that said book is weird and peculiar in tone - influential i think on the more antic of the postmodernists a generation later eg coover - but I think it's not as widely read today as some contemporaries eg o'connor - also comic and steeped in religion - because the jagged style is so off-putting. 40 pp in and it's about char and situation only w no plot per se.


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