Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney

by Marion Meade

Book Overview

Nathanael West was a comic artist whose insight into the brutalities and absurdities of modern life proved prophetic. He is famous for two masterpieces, " Miss Lonelyhearts "and the most penetrating... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151011494
• ISBN13: 9780151011490
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A Tale Of Unfulfilled Promise With An Inappropriate Title

If modern audiences are aware of Nathanael West at all, it is on the basis of his two well-known novels Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day Of The Locust which are sometimes included as required reading in 20th century literature classes at colleges and universities. Eileen McKenney's primary claim to fame amounted to being the subject of a series of stories written about her by her sister Ruth McKenney. After her death, a play and a musical and two movies were based on these stories. This book is primarily a dual biography of Nate and Eileen with a lot about the often depressed and sometimes suicidal writer/professional communist Ruth McKenney thrown in. I found it interesting and liked it very much. The one thing I did not like about the book was the title. Marion Meade wrote an exceptional book, but I did not find anything in it that would imply it was funny or 'screwball'. I can only guess that she was trying to sum up the era and not her subject. The McKenny sisters lives were not particularly joyous after the early death of their mother and the same could be said about the pampered and indulged West whose personal cynicism was echoed in his novels. The level of shared happiness Nate and Eileen had was short-lived. They seemed very different from one another and it is difficult to ascertain if theirs would result in a long and enduring happiness had they lived. I would have to sum this book up as the ultimate tragedy. West died before he was able to bask in the critical acceptance he craved. Eileen died before she was able to completely move away from the 'pretty' mantle bestowed upon her by her mother and become a person in her own right. Ruth never completely recovered from Eileen's death and never enjoyed much success with her infrequent subsequent work. The level of research and footnoting on this book was first rate. Meade did a phenomenal job digging into lives of her subjects. It is loaded with a lot of personal information about not only her main subjects, but their friends and associates. She presented an indelible picture of the dominant emerging writers of the era and provided a lot of interesting information regarding how West's contemporaries interacted with one another. This is a great read for anyone interested in West,his works, and 20th century american literature.

Abbreviated lives...

Marion Meade's joint bio of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney (the "Eileen" in "My Sister Eileen") is a bio of two people who lived in interesting times, but somehow never seem to come alive in the book. Meade's book is well-written as she works with the material she has. But because both subjects lived abbreviated lives, dying at age 37 and 28 in a car crash in late 1940, there's not decades of material to look at and interpret. That is particularly true of McKenney, whose major claim to fame is that of the subject of her sister's books. She comes across as beautiful/bossy/tall/blonde/a Communist-sympathiser/a mother at an early age/an office worker, etc. She moved out to Los Angeles from New York (after having moved from Cleveland in her late teens), met Nathanael West, married him, and died early. I honestly don't get the feeling there was much "there" there. West - born Nathan Weinstein - comes off better in Meade's bio. Born into a fairly wealthy immigrant Jewish family of builders, he spent his early life as the adored first (and only) son, dropping in and out of schools -both secondary and colleges - until a somewhat disreputable application (using another Nathan Weinstein's transcript) got him into Brown. He graduated and went to work in the family business. Most of his adult life was spent writing and he eventually published four novels, the two best known are "Miss Lonelyhearts" and "The Day of the Locust". He spent his 20's living in New York and Paris, hanging out with the literary geniuses of the time, and working as a hotel manager. He really comes off as sort of a cipher; he blends in to whatever group he's with. Sexually precocious, he contacted gonorrhea several times in his life. He had no real relationships with women - a couple of possible "engagements" - before he met and married Eileen McKenney. I'm actually a little confused about his attraction - and vise-versa -with McKenney. West died before he could taste true literary fame. And before he could experience a true home life with wife and child. I wonder how different - and more interesting - McKenney and West's lives would have been if they had lived longer.

A Different World

Eccentric characters abound in this somewhat informal, breezily written biography. S. J. Perelman, F. Scott FitzGerald, and various Hollywood denizens are all here. And the author does an exceptional job in placing Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney within the social context of the Depression and pre-war America. This biography is actually focused on three people--a good portion of the book centers on Eileen's sister Ruth, a fascinating character in her own right. The author spends perhaps too much time on the McKenney/Flynn clans, but fortunately, most of the sisters' ancestral background is relegated to the notes section of the book. It is the gradual coming together of these two very different people--Nat and Eileen--that drives the narrative forward toward its grisly, yet sensitvely-handled, conclusion. Highly recommended.