Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West

When the 60s rock group The Band has been asked to explain their signature song, "The Weight,"
Robbie Robertson usually describes it as being about the impossibility of doing something good, or something like that. The narrator of the song is taking greetings from "Miss Fanny" to the town he's visiting, and everywhere he goes suffers for his willingness to do her that favour. Everyone wants a favour, and he suffers their requests one after the other until he's been loaded down with the weight that everyone puts on him.

Nathanael West's very short novel Miss Lonelyhearts reminded me of that song. The title character, a male who writes an advice column for a newspaper under the Lonelyhearts pseudonym, starts out mocking his correspondents, but eventually is overcome by an unbearable identification with their suffering. The novel depicts what happens when he tries to get involved and alleviate some of the suffering. It's not a pretty picture.

The idea is simple enough (and powerful as it is), but the book held my attention only partly because of the story. Interspersed throughout the narrative are transcripts of the letters he receives from readers, complete with grammatical errors and awful spelling. But these letters evince a naive desire for help arising from real trials, and they make it almost impossible not to identify with Miss Lonelyhearts' sympathy for his readers.

Things don't turn out well, and there is a cynicism about life that I don't really share, but as extreme as some of the situations and characters are in Miss Lonelyhearts it somehow gets at something of life that we all experience from time to time.