In 2015 I read Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West.
A few notable excerpts:
On p.29: "Like Shrike, the man they imitated, they were machines for making jokes. A button machine makes buttons, no matter what the power used, foot, steam, or electricity. They, no matter what the motivating force, death, love or God, made jokes."
On p.55: "Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in another. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world had a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature...the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth while."
On p.57: "'Perhaps I can make you understand. Let's start from the beginning. A man is hired to give advice to readers of a newspaper. The job is a circulation stunt and the whole staff considers it a joke. He welcomes the job, for it might lead to a gossip column, and anyway he's tired of being a leg man. He too considers the job 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 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.'"
And let's not fail to mention the Afterword! If you are fortunate enough to procure a copy with the succinct 20 pages punched up by Stanley Edgar Hyman, you will find they greatly enrich any further understanding you might wish to cultivate - both contextual and allegorical.