But, could there still be some sliver of wisdom to be gained, and some foresight to be dug out of West?
After all, the Soviets were atheistic, and the fascists only tolerated the Church because they had to. West’s was a world of battling ideologies, not one of fighting religions. Wasn’t it we who resurrected those?
Isn’t it our preacher who speaks in tongues, our President who speaks not even in one, and our Jesus who campaigns Republican? And isn’t it our Allah who rewards us for exploding ourselves into crowds in the name of our illiterate Mullah?
Let us draw fresh blood for the altar.
Hit My Baby, One More Time
Somewhere in the middle of The Day of the Locust we meet Adore, an eight-year old boy, and his ambitious, greedy mother.
Adore’s mother is convinced that her son has “talent”, and will one day break into show business. Would it not be a sin to not do her utmost — look what she’s sacrificed to give her boy the chance she couldn’t have — to foster his talents and get them noticed by all the important people who notice fostered talent? Wouldn’t she be a cruel mother if she didn’t push him into performing like a monkey to a music box? It’d be a waste, for sure, and no one likes squanderers.
It’s only natural, then, that she’d force Adore to perform for the pleasure of two strange men, Tod and Homer.
His shoulders twitched as though they already felt the strap. He tilted his straw sailor over one eye, buttoned up his jacket and did a little strut, then began:
"Mama doan wan’ no peas
An’ rice, an’ cocoanut oil,
Just a bottle of brandy handy all the day.
Mama doan wan’ no peas,
Mama doan wan’ no cocoanut oil.”
His singing voice was deep and rough and he used the broken groan of the blues singer quite expertly. He moved his body only a little, against rather than in time with the music. The gestures he made with his hands were extremely suggestive.
“Mama doan wan’t no gin,
Because gin do make her sin,
Mama doan wan’ no glass of gin,
Because it boun’ to make her sin,
An’ keep her hot and bothered all the day.”
He seemed to know what the words meant, or at least his body and his voice seemed to know. When he came to the final chorus, his buttocks writhed and his voice carried a top-heavy load of sexual pain.
I don’t think this passage needs a long explanation. If there’s one thing Nathanael West nailed in The Day of the Locust, it was a young, nubile Britney Spears.
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