"I don't like people who won't drink. It isn't sociable. They feel superior and I don't like people who feel superior."
Jacket Copy: The Day of the Locust--considered by many to be the best novel about Hollywood ever written--revolves around Tod Hackett, who hopes for a career in set design only to discover the boredom and emptiness of Hollywood's inhabitants. In the end, only blood will serve. The day of the locust is at hand...
Similar to: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Joan Didion's "Play It As It Lays"
Highlights:
--This book is much more about the symbols contained within it, than about anything to do with the "plot". These symbols are ones that will stick with you long after you finish the book, coloring your thinking about Hollywood and about the American Dream more generally.
--The economy of prose is wonderfully done, much like in Hemingway and Didion's works of sparse prose with lots of white space.
--Urges us to not see things as black and white, particularly in judging people; to acknowledge the ambiguity that exists in trying to determine the moral character of one's fellow man and the fact that we all have the potential to let darkness take over in our lives, given the right circumstance (i.e. boredom and disappointment with how life has turned out).
Interesting quote, I have definitely had friends who fit that stigma. Although I doubt that's a fair stigma to extend to all non drinkers.
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