An Undercurrent In American Fictions In The 1930s

Nathanael West was a writer with a unique personality in the history of modern American literature,whose main works were four fictions published in the 1930 s.But in the 1930 s,his fictions were either crude or poor in the eyes of mainstream critics,or submerged in main tide of the times once they came out.After the 1950 s,West became famous.His fictions were regarded as “the perfect work of art,surpassing anything left by his generation”.He himself was considered to be the “the chief neglected talent”in the early 20 th century,and a top-notch writer comparable to literary leaders such as Hemingway,Fitzgerald,and Faulkner.There were two revivals in the study of West in the United States in the 1960 s and 1990 s,during which high-level research results emerged.However,West's research has not formed a scale in our country.There are few articles about the study,and research achievements of high academic value are still rare.In the past studies of West,no one had fully explained why his fictions were repeatedly censured in the 1930 s but were highly regarded in the post modern era after his death from the perspective of the peculiarity of West's creation.This paper focuses on analyzing the literary characteristics of West's four fictions which run counter to the main theme of the American literature in the 1930 s.Moreover,taking West's works together with his spiritual life prototype,the paper analyzes his unique thoughts and spiritual characteristics.In the interweaving of the two clues of literal meaning and implicit meaning,the paper comprehensively and deeply interprets West's unique perceptual and acrimonious novelistic creation,and explores the unique value of his works.The Dream Life of Balso Snell was West's first fiction.Early critics condemned the fiction and concluded it as a worthless pamphlet.Today,even in the American academic circles where West's research results are relatively abundant,few people talk about this work.West used Balso to mock religion,art and life wantonly.Balso is an autobiographical image,whose taunting attitude towards Judaism is derived from West's abomination of his own Jewish ancestry;the ambivalence he shows in the process of mocking Catholic and Christian myths is derived from West's vague cultural identity.It is precisely based on the sense of identity torn apart and contradictory cultural psychology that West has formed the melancholic and pessimistic cultural temperament,yet laughed merrily or cursed angrily.In his mocking art,he used disgusting decorations and images,and even developed the description of ugly and filthy things into a kind of interest.West used surrealist techniques frequently to emphasize the absurdity and pain of life in his writing of mocking life,but he denied surrealists' purpose of “repairing”or “recreating” the world with the power of spiritual desires.This fiction reveals West's contradictory and gloomy psychological characteristics and spiritual temperament at the beginning of creation,reveals his Da Da-like attitude towards art and life.More importantly,it lays the foundation for the pessimistic and negative tone of West's works,which is the key to this fiction being unique in American literary world in 1930 s and unaccepted by critics at that time.Miss Lonelyhearts was West's masterpiece,which clearly presented the core theme of West's literature: the persistent pursuit of modern people and the spiritual disillusionment after the pursuit has no results.The characters in the fiction are struggling with extreme mental hardship in a world full of pornography and violence.They suffer from it with feelings of resentment and despair.Although they try different ways to get rid of mental hardship,but there is no way to solve the problem: all spiritual exploration would end in disillusionment,and no one could get salvation.So they question the meaning of life and the fundamental purpose of human existence.Most of the above-mentioned characters are seen in the text with the characteristics of broken personality,and they are derived from West's unique understanding of American society during the Great Depression.In his view,America had become a spiritual desert island.He spared no effort to write about a chaotic,broken,and painful world,and focused on the spiritual and cultural crisis of people in this world.Unlike the mainstream literature in the 1930 s,this fiction was not based on a true portrayal of history,but it was a more explicit and acerbic description of the morbid society in crisis in the 1930 s.Although the fiction was particularly prominent in the American literary world at that time,it was also a faithful account of the times.A Coll Million was the most criticized one of West's fictions.The critics' condemnation of it mainly focuses on two points of view.One is that this is a poor work imitating Alger's fiction;the other is that the fiction is worthless.These views are based on the misunderstanding of West's creative intentions by some critics.Although West imitated the image characteristics of Alger's heroes,language style and narrative style of Alger,it was the result of West's “rewriting” Alger's fictions with parody,and its fundamental purpose was to subvert the traditional values represented by the American Dream.This fiction has nothing scared in reflecting the horror atmosphere of modern America.West not only created the images of political terror,but also brought them to dictatorship by promoting American ideals.West implied that fascist political terror was quietly spreading in American society.He aimed to reflect the “horror ghost” in modern people's ideology,and then to show that the human spiritual world would eventually fall apart.At that time,American writers were mostly concerned about the psychological needs of the American public.By the time they wrote about the American Dream,they paid more attention to expressing its sublimation on spiritual level.But West told his readers that the American Dream was the nightmare brought America to the end.The value of this fiction is that it profoundly deconstructs American traditional values and it makes the first cry against American fascism.The Day of the Locust was West's last fiction.The American critics regard it as one of the best works describing Hollywood.While depicting the Hollywood art world in this fiction,West completed the ultimate writing of American modern civilization and the entire Western world.West used surrealist techniques to write the Hollywood world fancy and false,this world was the result of his artistic processing of his own eyes and real feelings in Hollywood.West aimed to insinuate the fancy and false modern American civilization with his Hollywood world.The characters in the fiction are Hollywood fringe people.They are symbols of Hollywood's pathological culture and microcosms of human suffering.When they are driven into a corner by life,there are derivative terrible force of chaos in their despair.It is a kind of force that destroying Hollywood and the entire world.West implicated that the despair in the souls of the American public during the Great Depression would evolve into a unquenchable destructive force once it was touched.In the meantime,West created an atmosphere of apocalyptic fury in this novel,and he pushed his consistently pessimistic and desperate emotion to the extreme in this atmosphere.At that time,the United States was trying to recover from the Great Depression,but West repeatedly explained that the spiritual and cultural crisis would bring about the decline of modern civilization as well as the catastrophe in the history of mankind;America was at the end of its rope,the whole western world was on the brink of destruction.The peculiarity of West's novelistic creation stems from his peculiar perception and acrimony.He not only perceived the despair hidden deep in people's souls that his contemporaries did not perceive,but also consistently portrayed this despair in his creation.Black is not the color of one of his fictions,but the basic tone of all of his works.His fictions were like an undercurrent,quietly surging under the mainstream of the literary world in the 1930 s.People in that period generally paid attention to the externalized social contradictions.Their social psychology had not yet noticed the existence of this undercurrent,so they only saw the crude and ugly representation of West's fictions.They didn't appreciate or understand his fictions.In the 1950 s,West's pessimistic and desperate temperament became the common psychological emotions of people after World War II.The undercurrent in his fictions quietly flowing in the depths of people's souls had become a turbid current surging above the mainstream literary world in the post modern era.The value of West's fictions lies in the peculiar perception and acrimony.The black world he described comprised all the social truths he had unearthed.In the American literary world in the 1930 s,West was the writer who had the deeper knowledge of the spiritual world of modern people,and he was also the first writer who perceived certain cruxes in American society and made them known to the public,which was a manifestation of his conscience.From being condemned and ostracized to having a certain number of readers,West's fictions are a perspective mirror of modern American society,and through his fictions,the evolution of modern people's social psychology can be seen.