The Day of the Locust and The Dream Life of Balso Snell

by Nathanael West

These two novellas demonstrate the fragility of the American dream, from two very different perspectives. In 'The Day of the Locust', talented young artist Tod Hackett has been brought to Hollywood to work in the design department of a major studio. He discovers a surreal world of tarnished dreams, where violence and hysteria lurk behind even the most glittering facade. Liberty and freedom have been turned into a bizarre nightmare in 'The Dream Life of Balso Snell', which focuses on the personal despair and disintegration of its protagonist, the poet Balso.

Genres: Fiction, Classic Literature, American, Adult, Classics, Literary Fiction, Novels

234 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 25, 1991

About the author

Born Nathanael von Wallenstein Weinstein to prosperous Jewish parents, from the first West set about creating his own legend, and anglicising his name was part of that process. At Brown University in Rhode Island, he befriended writer and humourist S. J. Perelman (who later married his sister), and started writing and drawing cartoons. As his cousin Nathan Wallenstein also attended Brown, West took to borrowing his work and presenting it as his own. He almost didn't graduate at all, on account of failing a crucial course in modern drama. West indulged in a little dramatics of his own and, in tearful contrition, convinced a gullible professor to upgrade his marks.

After spending a couple of years in Paris, where he wrote his first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell, he returned to New York, where he managed (badly by all accounts) a small hotel, the Sutton, owned by his family. As well as providing free board for struggling friends like Dashiell Hammett, the job also gave West ample opportunity to observe the strange collection of misfits and drifters who congregated in the hotel's drugstore. Some of these would appear in West's novel Miss Lonelyhearts.

West spent the rest of his days in Hollywood, writing B-movie screenplays for small studios and immersing himself in the unglamorous underworld of Tinseltown, with its dope dealers, extras, gangsters, whores and has-beens. All would end up in West's final masterpiece, The Day of the Locust.

West's life ultimately ended as tragically as his fictions. Recently married, and with better-paid script work coming in, West was happy and successful. Then, returning from a trip to Mexico with his wife Eileen, he crashed his car after ignoring a stop sign and killed them both. This was just one day after the death of his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Reviews

[qtasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The five stars, for The Day of the Locust not the dream life of Balso Snell. The first part of this book is some kind of nightmare, with the city of Los Angeles,set in flames. I want to read this book again, mostly The day of the locust , I wonder if this text should be thought of as a literary horror story its a text about a city that's eating its self alive and some of the main characters in this text are just a small cluster of this self eating organ. The Dream Life of Balso Snell, I don't know what to say It didn't make much of an impression on me like the first part of the book it seems to just slows down the rest of the book Maybe when if I read these stories again, maybe the second story will make a leap at me like the first one.

[Jayna · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's not perfect, but i like it

[Aija Lejniece · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not a pleasurable book, it was interesting to read a book on Hollywood “of the period”. Admittedly, I took one look at the Balso Snell story and decided against the certain petite of reading it.

[Shane Starling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Locust, hmmmm, not so much; didn't get me, or i didn't get them, all these Hollywood outcasts and cling-ons drifting around in sweltering, burning Los Angeles. The metaphor of the guy getting shoved around violently by the frenzied movie premier crowd at the end was clever and quite well done, but much the rest of it just felt too hammy and hard to relate to. Maybe that's just what a century does to a piece of supposed classic literature. Ossifies it. I guess for its time it is a pretty bloody dark tome with its dalliances with boozin n whorin n druggin n failin. There were lessons there i guess about vanity and what a town built on boasting and performance can do to people, how it can utterly chew them up harder then the Midwest dumps they were trying oh so hard to escape did. That's the sadness at the heart of the book and everything, then as now : the system is gamed for just about everyone. And yet for many, it is still the only game in town... That's the real tragedy...
The bonus short story at the back of the book was thus an unexpected gem. Not really sure what it was about, but the writing leapt into new levels of playfulness and fold and terrific absurdist tumble. Some passages came wild of the page, almost acid stripping the shame of centuries of self consciousness amid the joyous splurge. Quite an effort. Charmed!

[Melodie Wendel-Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for both stories.

"...he only wondered if he weren't exaggerating the importance of the people who came to California to die."
(The Day of the Locust)

Both stories are about the artist looking for creativity to strike. Locusts felt more film noire-ish in writing style; was expecting a real shock. But it's just everyday observation til a riot at end inspires him for creating his "LA on fire" painting. Enjoy his writing style, sad he had tragic end in LA.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Day of the Locust has some of the best characters in literature. West describes them with such vile and detail that they feel so real anf awful.

The Dream Life of Balso Snell is a brilliant dive into the artists psyche. It took me a while to understand, but I loved it.

[Chad Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the story on it’s face but the symbolism under the surface makes it all the more fascinating. Must read with reference book/material. Now I know where the name “Homer Simpson” comes from.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quirky and humorous novellas about the American dream and dissolution.

[Amie (ReadwithAmie) · Rating 2 out of 5]

trigger warnings for violence, abuse, child death and animal cruelty.

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intoxicating book which explores the Surrealism underlying the American Dream. Here the Hollywood dream is subverted, and the life of the characters' that inhabit this dream-scape (filled with culture-clashes, falling stage-props, dwarfs, paper sphinxes, rubber dead horses in pools) imitate art. Characters become inter-textual, stuck in a cycle of following out the American Novel, objectified as works of art: Goya, Rosa, Daumier, the Surrealists - everything is parodied in Hollywood. Even the Bible: the 'day of the locust', a biblical plague turned into a plague of consumerism and satire. West creates a nightmarish world where catastrophe and apocalyptic visions abound, where dreams are never fully realised but always on the brink of understanding, where characters are played about in the novel like the very symbolic props they are. What underpins this American dream, West asks? The answer is not a pretty one but one that hints at a deep psychoanalytic barbarism, an innate sexual violence that like the automobile, gold money, and the movie business permeates high and low society alike.

[Madhuri · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a few moments when I felt the book was upto something great, especially in Balso Snell, but it soon faded. The Day of the Locust seemed predictable, and even in its relative shortness seemed pretty lengthy. The book is about showmanship and how people get addicted to it, a theme which has already been beautifully depicted by showmen themselves, so much so that a book on that subject seems dull.

[Graeme · Rating 4 out of 5]

*The review is for The Day of the Locust.

Really liked this book. A lot of passages make you sit up and take notice. I think the author is fantastic in the way he makes you feel the ugliness on the streets and either the desperation or glaring arrogance in the faces of many of the characters. This is a unique and memorable group of people he brings together if only for a short time.

[Eddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Homer Simpson is in the book, but this one's more self-conscious than the other. There's a painting in it too. In Balso Snell they all climb into the anus of a trojan horse and find things. Good fun.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book touted as a look at the movie industry, there's much of the narrative takes place away from the studio's control. Its a dark atmosphere filled with fringe characters doing unsavoury things to each other. Sad and short....

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

The four stars are for 'The Day of the Locust'. The second novella in the book, 'The Dream Life of Balso Snell', is less convincing in my opinion.

[Christine]

Interesting, kind of predictable, abrupt ending. It was good but I don't know that it was 100 greatest modern novels good.

[Darryl Berger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insidious, desperate, creepy.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

The three stars are all for The Day of the Locust, which is good if obvious. The Dream Life of Balso Snell is poor.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. Tod, the talented artist, meditates on the disenfranchisement of middle class America. Culminating in a riot scene, he has an epiphany about all the people he knows.

[Simon Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Day of the Locust is damn fine. The Dream Life... is garbage.