Love is a Four-Letter Word
Whatever love may be, in West’s degenerated Hollywood, it’s quite simple. It’s often expressed as a fantasy, in a cheap restaurant, and alone. Sometimes the waiter interferes and there’s no climax; other times it works just swell.
If only he had the courage to wait for her some night and hit her with a bottle and rape her.
That’s Tod speaking. He’s the hero of the novel. He’s just being honest. And West, he’s just being cynical, brutal and honest — like always.
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.
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