Nathanael West’s front-page ending

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In Sunday’s Times Wendy Smith reviews a book about the lives and brief marriage of Nathanael West, author of ‘The Day of the Locust,’ and Eileen McKenney, the heroine of ‘My Sister Eileen,’ which was turned into a Broadway play that opened just a few days after the couple were killed in a 1940 car accident.

The crash was big news in at least one edition of The Times, which headlined its front-page story ‘Scenario Writer and Wife Killed in Auto Collision.’

The actual story is a rather run-of-the-mill account of more than one traffic incident.

You can find the 1940 story here and the book review here.

-- Keith Thursby