Volume 15, Number 5 · September 24, 1970
Doing West
By F.W. Dupee
Nathanael West: The Art of His Life
by Jay Martin
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 435 pp., $10.00
Mr. Jay Martin is described on the jacket of this book as a thirty-four-year-old professor of English at a California university and the author of two earlier books, one on Conrad Aiken, the other on American literary history from 1865 to 1914. The writing of this biography of Nathanael West has obviously cost him a lot of work. In a Preface he lists the many persons whom he interviewed in taped sessions, or in sessions on which he took notes, or by correspondence. Included also is a list of no fewer than thirteen more or less prominent people who have read and criticized his manuscript in its several drafts. Finally he has had access to papers in the possession of S.J. Perelman and his wife, Laura, West's sister. The book thus comes to us well documented and thoroughly sponsored. It is probably as candid a book as anyone could have written at this time, when many of West's friends and relatives are still living or only recently dead. Nathanael West: The Art of His Life is a useful book.
Review, 2303 words
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