Nathanael West’s Bible

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Title

Nathanael West’s Bible

Subject

open to “Exodus” 9-10: The Plague of the Locusts, and marked with a laid-in leaf

Description

West’s Day of the Locust, a Hollywood novel which draws its apocalyptic motif from Exodus, was made into a film in 1975. Provenance: S. J. Perelman, who was married to West’s sister. Born Nathan Weinstein, West had this Bible monogrammed with his nom de plume, which included the German aristocratic particle “von” plus “Wallerstein” for extra “provenance.” The leaf may have been put there posthumously. Technically this is a case of literature into literature into film…

Source

From the collection of Robert M. Rubin