Tycoons & Locusts: A Regional Look at Hollywood Fiction of the 1930s

by Associate Professor Walter Wells, Harry Moore (Preface by)

The fascination and lure of Hollywood during the Great Depression are explored in this unique and perceptive book. Wells concentrates on eight James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice , Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses , Don’t They? , John O’Hara’s Hope of Heaven , Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust , Budd Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run? , Raymond Chandler’s Farewell , My Lovely , and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon and The Pat Hobby Stories. Dominating and unifying the fiction discussed is an overriding theme of dis­solution, of falseness, of cynicism, Wells finds. His conclusion, which makes this book more than just another study of the fiction of the 1930s, is that the Hollywood-Southland region imposed these attitudes on the writers, whose fiction thus illus­trates important and interesting literary uses of region.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973