The Dream Life of Balso Snell

His journey through a mental jungle blends grandiose literary and religious allusions with erotic and scatological humor, as he encounters a contentious guide, a biographer writing a biography of a biographer, and a mystic trying to crucify himself with thumbtacks. Innovative and original, West's novel takes an unforgettable look at the dark side of the American dream. Unabridged republication of the classic edition.

Paperback , 64 pages. Published March 19th by Dover Publications first published To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. Sep 29, Travelin rated it liked it.

It also contains a hint of insult about some Goodreads readers. I once kept a stack of recycled printouts at university, for keeping notes on the back. On turning a printout over, I discovered a short, really hilarious paragraph spewed out one night, probably by a bored engineer with nothing better to do, about his old dog, somewhere in a gothic south, and the lump it developed on its back.

For some reason I remember that pas Warning: For some reason I remember that passage better than a lot of passages I've read. Of some authors it's said that they've written the book we're glad we didn't write in our youths. In total contradiction to that, I wish more youthful works were published or introduced in schools. I think works like Silas Marner are inflicted on children who don't need or want a few brutally obvious messages drummed into them again and again, slow as a python's swallow. Nathanael West, in this, his first novel, his only apparent production after living s expat life in Paris, says as much about the middle class novel, if only as an excuse for this scatological mess he's cobbled together instead.

True, almost no details from the story stayed with me a few days later, but in the first reading, my mind was alive with concepts. It's probably because the book is thick with a young man's scattershot insights, probably picked out from any source he found amusing, confusing, and nonthreatening, the most evident source being some Dostoevsky. It's hard to imagine more insulting biographies than ones dedicated to Nathanael West. He's even blamed for dying young because he was such a bad driver. Some of the biographical details seem to be disturbingly true. In this book, he lists a diagnosis of gonorrhoea as being one of life's worst possible fates.

In his book A Cool Million, he spends altogether too much time describing the decor of each room of a brothel in loving detail. He appears to have been sort of Russian a Jew from Lithuania, possibly like some of my great grandparents, and definitely like The Three Stooges , the rich, prodigal son, who stayed immature quite a lot longer than some of us. His insulting hagiography of a sainted flea on the body of Christ is quite funny.

He copies and parodies Dostoevsky quite effectively. Maybe if he'd known how to invent flash fiction, his scattershot approach wouldn't have wreaked such havoc with this reader's memory.

Having just spent time in Greece, I found myself nodding at his mix of half understood Greek myths and, more importantly, his contempt of balanced rhetoric, so fascinating and maddening in parts of modern Greece. A people who see all sides and take the long view, like a well-read, patient reader, don't always make for exciting or responsive human beings at just the right moment.

This is a book that nearly any intelligent young man could write better, so I'll be looking for a better standard bearer of the genre, possibly David Foster Wallace or your suggestion, confused reader of a strange man's review. Jun 09, Heather Fryling rated it really liked it. The entitled man's Alice in Wonderland, the illusions that strips away all pretense and leaves our author with nothing but scat and entitlement.

I would never have read it had it not been included with Miss Lonelyhearts in a collection I bought. A fascinating little gem. Jun 02, Dan rated it it was ok Shelves: Oct 19, Jon athan Nakapalau rated it liked it Shelves: A very strange book Feb 24, Tanner rated it it was amazing. At least those are the genres I think it falls under. Under appreciated novel by West. Aug 31, Rick Slane rated it it was ok. I think you should read Miss Lonelyhearts instead and skip this.

Jul 15, Alan rated it really liked it. This is a greatly entertaining, snide, petulant, hilarious and rather tossed off little surrealist jig. It contains some great writing and great depravity: But what I love most about the book is its disgust it with writing i This is a greatly entertaining, snide, petulant, hilarious and rather tossed off little surrealist jig.

But what I love most about the book is its disgust it with writing itself. This book is one of the best examples of that most compelling urge of certain writers to shit on and destroy their own writing. The problem is, rather fittingly, that it ends smack in the middle of itself, mid-breath almost, and to little effect. Jan 25, Jamie Grefe rated it really liked it Shelves: West's prose seduces me to the hightest degree, but I can't help think about his untimely death and the possibilities of what he could have went on to produce. This short piece, to me, someone who greatly enjoys bizarre forms of music, film, poetry, television and so on, resonates and gives joy to my life.

I feel caught in a mind in love with the strangeness of life, the strangeness of creation and love and lust and beauty and comedy. Yes, this is a funny book, but funny in the way that PFFR cre West's prose seduces me to the hightest degree, but I can't help think about his untimely death and the possibilities of what he could have went on to produce.

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Yes, this is a funny book, but funny in the way that PFFR creates funny television. Well, this is a "dream life," so "dream logic" is at play, but there could be more, more that has escaped me.

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• The Dream Life of Balso Snell.

Nice to meet you again, Mr. Feb 07, Ben Dutton rated it liked it. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Wyrick and Veitch see the novel as a bomb hidden within a piece of art, much like the ancient Trojan Horse itself. As a form of cultural protest, Nathanael West's bomb is a dud. But the novel shouldn't be summarily dismissed as worthless juvenilia either. In this essay I argue that Balso 's form and content are shaped more by Nathanael West's professional fears, inexperience, and feelings of cultural belatedness than by his disgust for the literary bent.



Balso deserves our attention today not for the artistic myths it weakly tries to dispense with, but for what it strongly reveals about the vocation of authorship in general and the apprenticeship of Nathanael West in particular. When the novel's title character proclaims: In its randomness and frenetic pacing, in the pretentious way it attacks literary pretension, in its questioning of the belief that art can edify us, Balso reads more like an anxiety of influence dream than an assault on the Western canon.

The primary target of the author's satiric attack isn't literature; it's his own desire to write and publish.

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West's book isn't "a disavowal" of high modernism; it's a late entry within it. In Balso , West is stumbling toward finding his writing voice amidst a chorus of louder voices. He's also worrying out loud if a Depression-era audience for serious literature will still be out there to listen when he does. Volume is in Good condition..

Russian Hill Bookstore Published: Copy number of an edition limited to numbered copies. Very good copy in printed wrappers with some minor darkening to the covers and a bit of edge wear and with a half inch chip at top of spine. This was West's first novel, telling the story of a young man's quest for meaning in a series of surreal and satirical encounters within the body of the Trojan Horse.

James Pepper Rare Books, Inc. Dampstain to lower corner of text block, else very good plus in wrappers and illustrated dust jacket and very good only glassine that has chips and loss, particularly to the rear panel. One of numbered copies.

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West's first book, a satiric look at the artistic life. Paperback, french flaps covered in original glassine. Text clean; 95 pages.. Ships with Tracking Number! May not contain Access Codes or Supplements.