Upon picking up Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, this week’s update was to focus on short fiction set in Hollywood. Unfortunately, the search for stories available online bared little fruit. The best I can offer is a brief article from The Forward, reviewing the West’s novels.

Short Fiction:

• “The New Adam and Eve” by Nathanial Hawthorne
• “The Selfish Giant” by Oscar Wilde

Commentary & Criticism:

• Nathanial Hawthorne and the Spirit of Science
• “Artful By Nature” – Charles T. Rubin discusses Hawthorne’s “The New Adam and Eve”
• The Marginally Jewish Reader: Nathanael West
• The Secret, Pseudonymous, Fiction-Writing After-Career of John Hughes

News & Reviews:

• Book Review: Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus
• Book Review: Ink-stained Genius – The Claremont Institute’s Paul A. Cantor on Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing by Michael Slater
• Luxury Hotels Offer Elite Guests Complimentary e-Readers
• Celebrated Critic Frank Kermode Dies
• New Writers Take the Internet Route to Reaching Readers
  
• Getting a Mental Kick from Reading Difficult Books
• Infinite Gestures – Alan Jacobs attempts to read Infinite Jest on Kindle
  
• Is the Bell Tolling for Dorchester’s Horror Line?
  
• Nonhumans in Human Literature

Wright’s Writing Corner:

• Dicken’s Trick … With Magic

Poetry:

“Satire V from The Scourge of Vacuity” by L. J. Fattoroski

National Review digs into its archives and delivers a bit of satirical poetry from the June 2, 1970 issue.

The liberal I sing, thrice blessed sage –
Presiding spirit of this gaudy age.
No prejudice has he, but, Argus-eyed,
He sees of every question every side.
At Berkeley he was trained to keep his
mind
Wide open – at both ends. He’s not the
kind
To hasten to a rash decision; no,
Enlightened men act seldom and think
slow.
Asked once if he’d have lemon with his
tea,
He thought the problem over carefully:
For thirty days he thought, in deep
seclusion,
And then he found a tentative
conclusion.
While Jack Cade and his envious rout
rebel,
Making an ordered land disordered
hell,
He sits and listens to a cleric bray
The Gospel of St. Marx the livelong day.
“Social Justice” is a text and theme
Progressive parsons hold in high
esteem.
With such a passion did this cleric
speak,
He broke his wind, and scarlet flushed
his cheek;
But though he preached right on, with
unctuous art,
I swear there was more matter in the
fart.
The liberal thought them both extra-
ordinary:
He praised the text and cheered the
commentary.
In all things social or political
He is a perfect intellectual.

“Satire V from the Age of Vacuity” continues