Miss Lonelyhearts
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Narrated by:
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L. J. Ganser
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Kevin Pariseau
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By:
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Nathanael West
About this listen
Miss Lonelyhearts is Nathanael West's second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.
In the story, Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights. He also suffers from the pranks and cynical advice of his editor at the newspaper, named "Shrike", which is also a type of predatory bird. Miss Lonelyhearts tries several approaches as a way out of this depression (including religion, escaping to the countryside, and sex) but only ends up more confused.
The general theme of the novel is one of extreme disillusionment with Depression-era American society, a consistent theme throughout West's novels. However, the novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony. The novel can be treated as a meditation on the theme of theodicy, or the problem of why evil exists in the world. The novel's protagonist is psychologically overwhelmed by his perception of this evil, which is treated as an explanation for his increasingly desperate psychological condition. Although the characters of Miss Lonelyhearts are grotesque caricatures, the periodic letters sent to Miss Lonelyhearts, which describe real people with real insoluble problems, serve to ground the novel's Expressionism in reality.
©1933 Nathanael West (P)2009 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
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The Lonely Hearts Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Heather O'Neill
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of When We Lost Our Heads, a spellbinding story about two gifted orphans - in love with each other since they can remember - whose childhood talents allow them to rewrite their future. The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with the power of legend. An unparalleled tale of charismatic pianos, invisible dance partners, radicalized chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians, brooding clowns, and an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss. In a landscape like this, it takes great creative gifts to thwart one’s origins.
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IMPECCABLE BEAUTIFUL Writing, Interesting Story
- By Jordyn on 05-24-17
By: Heather O'Neill
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Angel of Harlem
- By: Kuwanna Haulsey
- Narrated by: Brenda Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Inspired by the extraordinary events of Dr. May Chinn’s life, Angel of Harlem is a deeply affecting story of love and transcendence. Weaving seamlessly scenes from the battlefields of the Civil War, during which her father escaped from slavery, to the Harlem living rooms and kitchen tables where May is sometimes forced to operate on her patients, this fascinating novel lays bare the heart of a woman who changed the face of medicine.
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Really Enjoyed!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-08-19
By: Kuwanna Haulsey
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The Wayward Bus
- By: John Steinbeck, Gary Schamhorst - introduction
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In his first novel to follow the publication of his enormous success, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's vision comes wonderfully to life in this imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California's back roads, transporting the lost and the lonely, the good and the greedy, the stupid and the scheming, the beautiful and the vicious away from their shattered dreams and, possibly, toward the promise of the future. This edition features an introduction by Gary Scharnhorst.
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Steinbeck always touches the heart, makes you feel
- By Kelly on 05-08-17
By: John Steinbeck, and others
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Tar Baby
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Desiree Coleman
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Jadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.
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So good that I'm writing my first Audible review!
- By BL on 12-10-11
By: Toni Morrison
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Rabbit, Run
- By: John Updike
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his - or any other - generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is 26 years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty - even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness, and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path.
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A Thinking Man's Novel
- By L. Berlyne on 01-12-09
By: John Updike
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Marjorie Morningstar
- By: Herman Wouk
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 28 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marjorie Morningstar is a love story. It presents one of the greatest characters in modern fiction: Marjorie, the pretty 17-year-old who left the respectability of New York's Central Park West to join the theater, live in the teeming streets of Greenwich Village, and seek love in the arms of a brilliant, enigmatic writer.
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Great story with really cheesy narration
- By James on 05-05-12
By: Herman Wouk
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The October Country
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Haunting, harrowing, and downright horrifying, this classic collection from the modern master of the fantastic features: "The Small Assassin": a fine, healthy baby boy was the new mother's dream come true - or her nightmare.... "The Emissary": the faithful dog was the sick boy's only connection with the world outside - and beyond.... "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone": a most remarkable case of murder - the deceased was delighted! And more!
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The October Country
- By steven richard pohl on 09-17-19
By: Ray Bradbury
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We the Living
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Mary Woods
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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We the Living portrays the impact of the Russian Revolution on three people who demand the right to live their own lives. At its center is a girl whose passionate love is her fortress against the cruelty and oppression of a totalitarian state. Rand said of this book: "It is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write."
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Emotionally intense, historically authentic
- By Geoffrey on 08-14-08
By: Ayn Rand
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Peyton Place
- By: Grace Metalious
- Narrated by: Tim O'Connor
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1956, when this novel was first published, communities all over New England snapped up copies to see if they were the town portrayed in the book. Peyton Place is the story of a repressive New England town known for its high standards of public morality, and the steamy sexual activities that take place behind its bedroom doors.
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Best book I've read to date!
- By Crusader on 11-07-11
By: Grace Metalious
What listeners say about Miss Lonelyhearts
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- W Perry Hall
- 01-27-16
Charged with Meaning, and Far Leftist Leaning
I bought this novella because I read a piece by Harold Bloom, a renowned and prolific lit critic and a Yale humanities professor, describing why he loves MISS LONELYHEARTS. I wasn't nearly as enamored by this 80-page existential black comedy, primarily because the author, Nathanael West, couldn't hide his contempt for all religion nor his dark-red leanings.
As the book begins, an unnamed 1933 NYC male newspaper columnist (I'll call "ML") has been assigned to write an advice column (similar in ilk to Dear Abby). ML thereafter starts suffering severe depression under the collective weight of the genuine agony and burdens thrown upon him in the "Dear Miss Lonelyhearts" letters of the readers.
At after-hours gatherings, his editor, aptly named Shrike, repeatedly hazes ML, condemning his religion (and art) as the "opiate of the masses" and jokes that ML is "an idealist in collision with humanity."
Exacerbating ML's depression is his belief that the Miss Lonelyhearts column is a big farce perpetrated on the public. To ease his pain, he turns to drinking, religion, traveling with his fiancee', and an affair with Shrike's wife. ML also agrees to meet with a lady who wrote that her poor crippled husband cannot satisfy her intimate needs. West leaves it ambiguous on whether ML's fornication with the lady was driven by a Messiah complex, an ephemeral apostasy, or a mixture of both.
This novella had the feel of a Marxist parable, the explanation of which would require my going far beyond the scope of a simple book review as well as into the bio of the author. That should tell you, at least, that its 80 pages are charged with meaning, latent and patent. All things considered, while the book is probably great for book club banter, it was not exactly a pleasure to read.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Michael Luginbill
- 11-30-24
Period Piece, Urban Americana
The author put together a pastiche of life among urban newspaper people during the speakeasy era. There was some sexuality, probably more than most novels of the era, without being totally explicit about it. It somewhat reminded me of the equally dark Maltese Falcon by Dashiel Hammett.
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- Jay Parker
- 11-02-21
Great
A classic. I read it as a young man and loved it then. After all these years I still am in awe by the careful selection of words and the power of them.
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- David MacLean
- 07-26-23
The greatest
Lean and gorgeous. This book requires repeat readings. It’s an alter at which I never tire of praying.
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Overall
- Dana
- 03-16-11
mixed up
This has an excruciatingly bad ten or twelve minute critical introduction. After that comes one of the creepiest well-known works of modern American fiction, read in a way that clouds but does not obliterate the tone and madness of the story. It's hard to understand why so many audiobook narrators read in cartoon-character voices. Oh well. The gist of Miss Lonelyhearts is here.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Darryl
- 05-27-12
A bit Gatsby-ish
Very good look at the time period and the struggles of the people and the despair of so many. Excellent and I hope the rest of West shows up soon. Good and surprising in some ways for the time it was written.
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1 person found this helpful
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- J. S.
- 09-04-21
Ahead of its time
This is really something special. Ahead of its time in a lot of ways. Thoroughly enjoyable and teeming with great passages and descriptions. Deft and lean indeed.
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