Miss L: The Religious Experience

Miss Lonelyhearts Has a Religious Experience

Chapter 15

The final chapter.

"After a long night and morning, towards noon, Miss Lonelyhearts welcomed the arrival of fever.  It promised heat and mentally unmotivated violence.  The promise was soon fulfilled; the rock became a furnace."

"He fastened his eyes on the Christ that hung on the wall opposite his bed.  As he stared at it, it became a bright fly, spinning with quick grace on a background of blood velvet sprinkled with tiny nerve stars."

"Christ is life and light."

"The room was full of grace.  A sweet, clean grace, not washed clean, but clean as the innersides of the inner petals of a newly forced rosebud."

 

"He immediately began to plan a new life and his future conduct as Miss Lonelyhearts.  He submitted drafts of his column to God and God approved them.  God approved his every thought."

"Suddenly the doorbell rang.  He climbed out of bed and went into the hall to see who was coming.  It was Doyle, the cripple, and he was slowly working his way up the stairs."

What happens next is the end, of the end, of the novel.  What happens next is the mental traffic accident of "Desperate," "Harold S. Catholic-mother," "Broken-hearted," "Broad-shoulders," "Sick-of-it-al," "Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband." 

The novel ends in its own sad beauty.

There is no other Nathanael West.  

 

Comments

[wine bag]

It's sad for somebody else who doesn't believe in it.