Join co-hosts Anne Moore and Chris Stacey for an innovative, exciting, and passionate approach to world literature. Our current city is Los Angeles in the 1930s. Our first selection is Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust.

Miss Lonelyhearts concerns a nameless man assigned to produce a newspaper advice column ― but as time passes he begins to break under the endless misery of those who write in, begging him for advice. The Day of the Locust, a study of the fragility of illusion. Set in Hollywood during the Depression, the narrator, Tod Hackett, comes to California in the hope of a career as a painter for movie backdrops but soon joins the disenchanted second-rate actors, technicians, laborers and other characters living on the fringes of the movie industry.

Club Member Registration: The book club is exclusively for club members. Here is a list of club members: CUCC Club Members.

If you are not a club member, join and we'll see you at the book club: Become a Club Member.

Non-Club Members Wait List: All registrants who are not club members are placed on a wait list. You are contacted if any seats are available after club member registration.

There are 6 Club Member seats left as of August 14, 2026. Club members can bring one guest.

There are 0 Non-Club Members on the Wait List.

Date: Thursday, November 5, 2026

Social Hour: 5:00pm

Book Club: 6:00PM Central

Location: Private room. Club on Michigan Avenue.

Reviews

 West’s Day of the Locust, a sun-blazed Polaroid of its time, seems permanently oracular. — Jonathan Lethem

"The work of Nathanael West, savagely, comically, tragically original, has come into its own," said novelist and screenwriter Budd Schulberg. "A new public [has] discovered in the writings of West a brilliant reflection of its own sense of chaos and helplessness in a world running more to madness than to reason."

Photo Credit: New Directions, Promotional Materials, Public Domain