West, the Prophet
The most astounding thing about The Day of the Locust is how visionary it is. West, in his infinite sarcasm, predicts so much of the perversity and grotesqueness of our world that it’s a shame he isn’t here to see it. I’m sure he’d share a grin, a nod, and a chuckle.
Do Scientologists Dream of Electric Sheep?
He spent his nights at the different Hollywood churches, drawing the worshippers. He visited the “Church of the Christ, Physical” where holiness was attained through the constant use of chestweights and spring grips; the “Church Invisible” where fortunes were told and the dead made to find lost objects; The “Tabernacle of the Third Coming” where a woman in male clothing preached the “Crusade Against Salt”; and the “Temple Moderne” under whose glass and chromium roof “Brain-Breathing, the Secret of the Aztecs” was taught.
In the “Church of the Christ, Physical” and the “Tabernacle of the Third Coming” we have our gyms and our diet plans, our bony women and our steroidal men. We have equality and we have happiness and we have less carbs. We’ve thrown away our fruit and our salt for shakes and pills. We have a new god, and it is I. Don’t Scientologists have the neatest pools?
In the “Church Invisible” we have the liars and the scammers; the Billy Grahams and the Benny Hinns. We have the suits with secret connections to gods who charge $1.99 a minute. I’ll give you five dollars more if you talk to my dead grandmother and tell her I love her.
In the “Temple Moderne” we have Eastern mysticism practiced by the Beatles. We have New Age stores selling soap that washes clean our karma, at half off the regular price. Shop at Neon Jesus; save a tree.
On Tyrants
West published The Day of the Locust in 1939. Hitler had already come to power, Mussolini had invaded Ethiopia, and Lenin had bamboozled Russia with three empty words: Peace Bread Land. Leni Riefenstahl had made Triumph of the Will, D.W. Griffith had made The Birth of a Nation, and Stalin had starved millions in the Ukraine without anyone making a film.
West wasn’t short of inspiration on tyrants.
Tod didn’t laugh at the man’s rhetoric. He knew it was unimportant. What mattered were his messianic rage and the emotional response of his hearers. They sprang to their feet, shaking their fists and shouting. On the altar someone began to beat a bass drum and soon the entire congregation was singing “Onward Christian Soldiers”.
So, perhaps, in this instance, West wasn’t so much a visionary as he was just aware and astute. Perhaps his ideas don’t apply as neatly to our contemporary, enlightened times as they did to the dark pre-WWII days when he wrote them.
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