"From there he could see a ten-acre field of cockleburs
spotted with clumps of sunflowers and wild gum. In the center of the field was
a gigantic pile of sets, flats, and props. While he watched, a ten-ton truck
added another load to it. This was the final dumping ground. He thought of
Janvier’s "Sargasso Sea." Just as that imaginary body of water was a
history of civilization in the form of a marine junkyard, the studio lot was
one in the form of a dream dump. A Sargasso of the imagination! And the dump
grew continually, for there wasn’t a dream afloat somewhere which wouldn’t
sooner or later turn up on it, having first been made photographic by plaster,
canvas, lath and paint."
Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
“Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, war. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.”
Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
No comments:
Post a Comment