Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown University, 1988. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2837. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 344-357).

Nathanael West is typically considered to be a “major minor” American writer of the late modernist period. Best known today for Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939), West wrote four dark novellas that excoriated mainstream American culture of the 1930s. Earlier critics viewed his writing mainly as an existentialist exploration of universal human suffering; more recently, critics have claimed West as an avant-garde devoted to the criticism of Depression-era capitalism and consumer society. This thesis represents something of a return to the earlier, humanist study of West’s fiction, which he himself regarded primarily as moral satire. What differentiates this project from earlier studies, however, is its style of criticism. Since the 1980s, a new revitalized and reoriented ethical criticism has emerged, as evidenced by the proliferation of scholarly works and journal special issues on the topic of literature and ethics, the growing number of readers like Todd Davis and Kenneth Womack’s Mapping the Ethical Turn (2001), and the general trend toward linking moral philosophy and literary criticism, as carried out by Martha Nussbaum and Richard Rorty, among others. The new ethical criticism tends to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Using approaches inspired by the scholarship of this late-twentieth century wave of ethical critics, including Wayne Booth and Daniel Schwarz, this dissertation provides a new critical illumination of West the implied author’s unique system of ethics, as dramatized through his narrative explorations of particular lives. It attempts to answer the question that has puzzled Americanist scholars contemplating his works since their initial publication: how can a fictional world so sordid and savage still evoke feelings of compassion and humanity in so many readers? The answer, I will argue, lies in the very ferocity of the author’s depictions of universal human suffering, which ultimately inspire empathy and solidarity despite West’s very real misanthropy.

Nathanael West is typically considered to be a “major minor” American writer of the late modernist period. Best known today for Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939), West wrote four dark novellas that excoriated mainstream American culture of the 1930s. Earlier critics viewed his writing mainly as an existentialist exploration of universal human suffering; more recently, critics have claimed West as an avant-garde devoted to the criticism of Depression-era capitalism and consumer society. This thesis represents something of a return to the earlier, humanist study of West’s fiction, which he himself regarded primarily as moral satire. What differentiates this project from earlier studies, however, is its style of criticism. Since the 1980s, a new revitalized and reoriented ethical criticism has emerged, as evidenced by the proliferation of scholarly works and journal special issues on the topic of literature and ethics, the growing number of readers like Todd Davis and Kenneth Womack’s Mapping the Ethical Turn (2001), and the general trend toward linking moral philosophy and literary criticism, as carried out by Martha Nussbaum and Richard Rorty, among others. The new ethical criticism tends to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Using approaches inspired by the scholarship of this late-twentieth century wave of ethical critics, including Wayne Booth and Daniel Schwarz, this dissertation provides a new critical illumination of West the implied author’s unique system of ethics, as dramatized through his narrative explorations of particular lives. It attempts to answer the question that has puzzled Americanist scholars contemplating his works since their initial publication: how can a fictional world so sordid and savage still evoke feelings of compassion and humanity in so many readers? The answer, I will argue, lies in the very ferocity of the author’s depictions of universal human suffering, which ultimately inspire empathy and solidarity despite West’s very real misanthropy.

Nathanael West (1903-1940) a écrit un nouveau chapitre de la littérature américaine, avant de disparaître brutalement en 1940. La publication de ses œuvres complètes en 1957 a suscité l'engouement de la scène littéraire américaine qui a vu en lui un précurseur de l'humour noir et de la critique consumériste, ainsi qu'un maître de la parodie et du comique-apocalyptique, alors en vogue dans les années 60. Cependant, il reste un auteur de la marge. Dans un article intitulé « Some Notes on Violence », publié plus tôt en 1932, West prenait ses distances avec le naturalisme et le réalisme social, affirmant qu'en Amérique la violence était « idiomatique » et que le romancier devait adapter son art à une réalité chaque jour plus fulgurante encore. Dans cette étude, nous voulons montrer dans quelle mesure ce regard décalé sur la réalité a fait de West un « contemporain » de son temps. En effet, pour le philosophe italien Giorgio Agamben, celui « qui appartient vraiment à son temps, le vrai contemporain, est celui qui ne coïncide pas avec lui ni n'adhère à ses prétentions, et se définit, en ce sens, comme inactuel ; mais précisément pour cette raison, précisément par cet écart et cet anachronisme, il est plus apte que les autres à percevoir et à saisir son temps ». Au contact de la brutalité et de la vélocité chaotique de sa fiction, à mesure que les plans s'enchaînent, que le récit accélère et que l'espace-temps se contracte jusqu'au point de rupture, nous voyons se dessiner les contours familiers de notre propre réalité. / American novelist Nathanael West (1903-1940) wrote a new chapter of American literature before he brutally disappeared in 1940. In the wake of the publication of The Complete Works of Nathanael West in 1957, literary critics hailed him as the precursor of black humor, as the critic of consumerism and mass culture, as the master of parody whose comic-apocalyptic tone was in fashion during the 1960s. In an article entitled “Some Notes on Violence” published in 1932, he rejected both naturalism and social realism as being unfit to represent the “idiomatic” violence of American society. According to West, the American writer needed to adapt his art of writing and find more appropriate ways to “handle” the ever-increasing, violent pace of reality. This study examines to what extent West's untimely response to a present reality has made him a true “contemporary.” Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben argues that “[those] who are truly contemporary, who truly belong to their time, are those who neither perfectly coincide with it nor adjust themselves to its demands. […] But precisely because of this condition, precisely through this disconnection and this anachronism, they are more capable than others of perceiving and grasping their own time.” The chaotic brutality of West's figurations, the velocity of his narrative, and the sequential editing of the scenes accelerating to the point of rupture, all mirror our own reality.