Nathanael West --- Miss Lonelyhearts

(4 stars; 2 reviews)

Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathanael West's novella about a 1930s New York agony aunt. Narrator Nigel Anthony Dramatised by Vincent Mc Inerney Director Shaun MacLoughlin CAST: Miss Lonelyhearts: William Hope Shrike: Bill Wallis Betty: Catherine Furshpan Mary: Bonnie Hurren Goldsmith: Bradley Lavelle Fay: Maggie McCarthy Jed: Stephen Garlick Simpson: Nigel Carrington Doyle: Ed Bishop Sunday Play Sun 6th Jan 1991, 19:30 on BBC Radio 3 A man is hired to give advice to the readers of a newspaper. The job is a circulation stunt and the whole staff considers it a joke… but after several months at it, the joke begins to escape him. He sees that the majority of the letters are profoundly humble pleas for moral and spiritual advice, that they are the inarticulate expressions of genuine suffering. He also discovers that his correspondents take him seriously. For the first time in his life, he is forced to examine the values by which he lives. This examination shows him that he is the victim of the joke and not its perpetrator. As described by Atkinson in the NY Times: "A scornful feature editor of a newspaper picks an ambitious young reporter to conduct the advice of the lovelorn column. Ambitious, opportunistic, 'Miss Lonelyhearts,' as the conductor of the column is inevitably dubbed, begins with contempt of the correspondents and confidence in his own cleverness. As time goes on, the genuineness of the agony in the letters that come in gets under the skin of the columnist. He is distressed to find himself presiding over a monstrous swindle. For he is an idealist in collision with humanity, as his diabolical managing editor expresses it."

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.