Nathanael West's "The Day of the Locust" is a novel set in Hollywood that explores the depravity of its characters, each in a shameless quest for their own desires, be it sex, money or fame. Tod Hackett, a young artist from the Yale School of Fine arts comes to Hollywood for a new job in designing film sets and costume. But as the young man settles in, he soon becomes acquainted with the true nature of Hollywood as a place where people will do whatever it takes to succeed, and if you don't succeed, well let's just say it won't be pretty... Literary critic, Richard Gehman, writes that the novel was "more ambitious" than West's previous novel, Miss Lonelyhearts and "showed marked progress in West's thinking and in his approach toward maturity as a writer."