The Day of the Locust

Nathanael West's Hollywood novel takes place mostly at the margins of the movie kingdom, the universe of set painters and extras, frustrated small-timers, hangers-on and oddities. There are prostitutes here, transplanted Eskimos, a failed comic who sells silver polish door to door so that he can force luckless customers to watch his act. No one in this book has found the promise that California was supposed to offer, and at the end their anger and resentments collect into a riot in the streets that is the sum of their individual discontents.