Miss Lonelyhearts - analisi + commento

Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West

• 4 opere più importanti:
  • The Day of the Locust
  • Miss Lonelyhearts

innovativo → segnano una svolta nella consapevolezza letteraria per la differenza tra letteratura colta & rappresentazione della realtà = comunicazione di massa = industria culturale uso e influenza dai mass media = tiene in considerazione più mass media dalla rappresentazione realistica/ naturalistica quella raccontata → esperienza mediata fumetto (mai diretta = sempre mediazioni di mediazioni)

[chiesa] [industria culturale]

funzione _religiosa = funzione _culturale

• acquisisce dimensione
• ritualità
• della funzione religiosa

= rito del consumismo

management

• del bisogno
• di spiritualità

management

• del bisogno
• di risposte esistenziali

soprattutto in quel periodo di grande povertà [a causa della recessione]

lo fanno attraverso

• i media / i contest
• concorsi e premi

molto appetibili

nel romanzo

se ne parla

in modo ironico

Sullo stesso piano

il romanzo è quindi una riflessione su di esso

proprio perché

non essendoci lavoro la gente si intratteneva così

La Chiesa non svolge una funzione molto differente dalle altre istituzioni di soccorso ideologico che le persone hanno

ma La Chiesa

Non si critica la società consumistica

perché non si distacca dall’industria culturale

ma si pone allo stesso livello

perché "regala" soluzioni ai problemi, se le persone comprano di più del prodotto religioso

= non esiste più la spiritualità = esiste solo la brutta esperienza in grado di riordinare il mondo

e che la rappresentano esattamente come i media (spesso con dolore)

ambientazione:

triangolo amoroso

Mrs Boyle

Mr Boyle

Mrs Lonelyhearts

Temi: adulterio / tradimento

spettacolarizzazione pornografica dei casi umani

esaltazione religiosa

tipici dell'intrattenimento di massa

dà uno spunto di riflessione sui meccanismi di produzione delle fantasie della societá

alla base vi è:

• sogno del successo personale
• logica dello spettacolo

The bar was only half full. Miss Lonelyhearts looked around apprehensively for Shrike and was relieved at not finding him. However, after a third drink, just as he was settling into the warm mud of alcoholic gloom, Shrike caught his arm.

"Ah, my young friend!" he shouted. "How do I find you? Brooding again, I take it."

"For Christ's sake, shut up."

Shrike ignored the interruption. "You're morbid, my friend, morbid. Forget the crucifixion, remember the renaissance. There were no brooders then." He raised his glass, and the whole Borgia family was in his gesture. "I give you the renaissance. What a period! What pageantry! Drunken popes...Beautiful courtesans...Illegitimate children..."

Although his gestures were elaborate, his face was blank. He practiced a trick used much by moving-picture comedians—the dead pan. No matter how fantastic or excited his speech, he never changed his expression. Under the shining white globe of his brow, his features huddled together in a dead, gray triangle.

"To the renaissance!" he kept shouting. "To the renaissance! To the brown Greek manuscripts and mistresses with the great smooth marble limbs...But that reminds me, I'm expecting one of my admirers—a cow-eyed girl of great intelligence." He illustrated the word intelligence by carving two enormous breasts in the air with his hands. "She works in a book store, but wait until you see her behind."

Miss Lonelyhearts made the mistake of showing his annoyance.

"Oh, so you don't care for women, eh? J. C. is your only sweetheart, eh? Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, the Miss Lonelyhearts of Miss Lonelyhearts..."

At this moment, fortunately for Miss Lonelyhearts, the young woman expected by Shrike came up to the bar. She had long legs, thick ankles, big hands, a powerful body, a slender neck and a childish face made tiny by a man's haircut.

"Miss Farkis," Shrike said, making her bow as a ventriloquist does his doll, "Miss Farkis, I want you to meet Miss Lonelyhearts. Show him the same respect you show me. He, too, is a comforter of the poor in spirit and a lover of God."

She acknowledged the introduction with a masculine handshake.

"Miss Farkis," Shrike said, "Miss Farkis works in a book store and writes on the side." He patted her rump.

He fled to the street, but there chaos was multiple. Broken groups of people hurried past, forming neither stars nor squares. The lamp-posts were badly spaced and the flagging was of different sizes. Nor could he do anything with the harsh clanging sound of street cars and the raw shouts of hucksters. No repeated group of words would fit their rhythm and no scale could give them meaning.

He stood quietly against a wall, trying not to see or hear. Then he remembered Betty. She had often made him feel that when she straightened his tie, she straightened much more. And he had once thought that if her world were larger, were the world, she might order it as finally as the objects on her dressing table.

He gave Betty's address to a cab driver and told him to hurry. But she lived on the other side of the city and by the time he got there, his panic had turned to irritation.

She came to the door of her apartment in a crisp, white linen dressing-robe that yellowed into brown at the edges. She held out both her hands to him and her arms showed round and smooth like wood that has been turned by the sea.

With the return of self-consciousness, he knew that only violence could make him supple. It was Betty, however, that he criticized. Her world was not the world and could never include the readers of his column. Her sureness was based on the power to limit experience arbitrarily. Moreover, his confusion was significant, while her order was not.

He tried to reply to her greeting and discovered that his tongue had become a fat thumb. To avoid talking, he awkwardly forced a kiss, then found it necessary to apologize.

"Too much lover's return business, I know, and I..." he stumbled purposely, so that she would take his confusion for honest feeling. But the trick failed and she waited for him to continue:

"Please eat dinner with me."

"I'm afraid I can't."

Her smile opened into a laugh.

She was laughing at him. On the defense, he examined her laugh for "bitterness," "sour-grapes," "a-broken-heart," "the devil-may-care." But to his confusion, he found nothing at which to laugh back. Her smile had opened naturally, not like an umbrella, and while he watched her laugh folded and became a smile again, a smile that was neither "wry," "ironical" nor "mysterious."

at random, until they found themselves in front of the little park. A light was burning in the comfort station and they went in to warm up.

An old man was sitting on one of the toilets. The door of his booth was propped open and he was sitting on the turned-down toilet cover.

Gates hailed him. "Well, well, smug as a bug in a rug, eh?"

The old man jumped with fright, but finally managed to speak. "What do you want? Please let me alone." His voice was like a flute; it did not vibrate.

"If you can't get a woman, get a clean old man," Gates sang.

The old man looked as if he were going to cry, but suddenly laughed instead. A terrible cough started under his laugh, and catching at the bottom of his lungs, it ripped into his throat. He turned away to wipe his mouth.

Miss Lonelyhearts tried to get Gates to leave, but he refused to go without the old man. They both grabbed him and pulled him out of the stall and through the door of the comfort station. He went soft in their arms and started to giggle. Miss Lonelyhearts fought off a desire to hit him.

The snow had stopped falling and it had grown very cold. The old man did not have an overcoat, but said that he found the cold exhilarating. He carried a cane and wore gloves because, as he said, he detested red hands.

Instead of going back to Delehanty's they went to an Italian cellar close by the park. The old man tried to get them to drink coffee, but they told him to mind his own business and drank rye. The whisky burned Miss Lonely-hearts' cut lip.

Gates was annoyed by the old man's elaborate manners. "Listen, you," he said, "cut out the gentlemanly stuff and tell us the story of your life."

The old man drew himself up like a little girl making a muscle.

"Aw, come off," Gates said. "We're scientists. He's Havelock Ellis and I'm Krafft-Ebing. When did you first discover homosexualistic tendencies in yourself?"

"What do you mean, sir? I..."

"Yeh, I know, but how about your difference from other men?"

"How dare you..." He gave a little scream of indignation.