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The Dream Life of Balso Snell
"West is still a satirist with few peers and no betters, and a writer of bleak, haunting power." — Kirkus Reviews. In this 1931 Dada-inspired work, the first novel of the author of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, the eponymous antihero stumbles across the Trojan Horse and climbs inside, embarking upon a dream within a dream. 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 1931 edition.
59 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1931
About the author
Nathanael West
48 books376 followersBorn 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
September 2, 2025
Echo of the antique times… Resounding of the ancient legendary war… An epic of Iliad transformed into the surrealism of the modern days…
On entering he finds an autograph of Nero, who also was here. “Qualis… Artifex… Pereo!” – “What an artist dies in me!”… And the surreal dadaistic tour ensues… Partly poetical, partly scatological… Religion, philosophy, literature, romance, art…
The great inheritance of the past always helps us in the present.
While walking in the tall grass that has sprung up around the city of Troy, Balso Snell came upon the famous wooden horse of the Greeks. A poet, he remembered Homer’s ancient song and decided to find a way in.
On examining the horse, Balso found that there were but three openings: the mouth, the navel, and the posterior opening of the alimentary canal. The mouth was beyond his reach, the naval proved a cul-de-sac, and so, forgetting his dignity, he approached the last. O Anus Mirabilis!
On entering he finds an autograph of Nero, who also was here. “Qualis… Artifex… Pereo!” – “What an artist dies in me!”… And the surreal dadaistic tour ensues… Partly poetical, partly scatological… Religion, philosophy, literature, romance, art…
“After all, what is art? I agree with George Moore. Art is not nature, but rather nature digested. Art is a sublime excrement.”
The great inheritance of the past always helps us in the present.
September 17, 2022
A very strange book...but strange is sometimes good...sometimes...good that is...sometimes. A kind of scatalogical commentary on the digestive aspects of society (?) The reduction of any aspiration to the corrosiveness of reality (?) I could be way off here - would like to hear more about what other people think about this singular work.
April 8, 2025
There seems to be no consensus on this, West's first novel. When reviewed, the general timbre is less than ecstatic. So, here's my take:
1. The Trojan Horse: Folks are really hung up on the Horse. The novel is really just a series of unrelated vignettes that allow West to muse, hilariously and profoundly, on a ton of independent themes. There is no 'novel' in the linear/arc/blah sense. The Trojan Horse is West's fucking funny device to house a ton of episodic writing INSIDE THE GUISE of a novel (not yelling; refusing coding). Get it? The whole thing takes place, yep, in the asshole of the Trojan Horse. Can it be more obvious that West begins by effectively admonishing, 'Lo, lots of shit ahead?' I think some may be looking for some 'profundity of metaphor' that, to me, just ain't there. It's better for it.
2. As a novel, it isn't great, sure. So what? Nathanael West would subsequently knock out 1-2-3 perfect novels in short order, wham; storm Hollywood; get absolutely shitty at the Derby; die young; and have his Locust still taught as a formally flawless example of the novel-to-screenwriting. This, as a resume, is not shitty. Maybe my favorite part is that he always took the time to skewer modernism. Goddamn sweetheart of a man!
I'm convinced West was a genius, at least of sorts, with an incredibly diversified scholarship; this is especially supported when you place his age at the time of any given writing of your choice. He's freely associative and plenary with multi-disciplines, all cranked through his grinder to turn out damn great work. He was a dapper, smooth-talking sonofabitch in the age of unironic fedoras. The 'perfect' work is widely read and long adjudicated as 'brilliant.' My advice: give this poor old horse its turn around the track. With all seriousness, it is more often gorgeous than not. You may even pick up some shit.
1. The Trojan Horse: Folks are really hung up on the Horse. The novel is really just a series of unrelated vignettes that allow West to muse, hilariously and profoundly, on a ton of independent themes. There is no 'novel' in the linear/arc/blah sense. The Trojan Horse is West's fucking funny device to house a ton of episodic writing INSIDE THE GUISE of a novel (not yelling; refusing coding). Get it? The whole thing takes place, yep, in the asshole of the Trojan Horse. Can it be more obvious that West begins by effectively admonishing, 'Lo, lots of shit ahead?' I think some may be looking for some 'profundity of metaphor' that, to me, just ain't there. It's better for it.
2. As a novel, it isn't great, sure. So what? Nathanael West would subsequently knock out 1-2-3 perfect novels in short order, wham; storm Hollywood; get absolutely shitty at the Derby; die young; and have his Locust still taught as a formally flawless example of the novel-to-screenwriting. This, as a resume, is not shitty. Maybe my favorite part is that he always took the time to skewer modernism. Goddamn sweetheart of a man!
I'm convinced West was a genius, at least of sorts, with an incredibly diversified scholarship; this is especially supported when you place his age at the time of any given writing of your choice. He's freely associative and plenary with multi-disciplines, all cranked through his grinder to turn out damn great work. He was a dapper, smooth-talking sonofabitch in the age of unironic fedoras. The 'perfect' work is widely read and long adjudicated as 'brilliant.' My advice: give this poor old horse its turn around the track. With all seriousness, it is more often gorgeous than not. You may even pick up some shit.
September 4, 2009
Closer in spirit and structure to the proto-Surrealism of De Chirico (and his brother, Alberto Savinio-- his "Psyche" is a strange half-brother to Balso Snell) than to the principled chaos of dAdA (the blurb at the top of this page likens it to dAdA for some reason). Also reminded me a great deal of Luis Bunuel; made me want to watch "The Exterminating Angel" and "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" back-to-back.
It's 62 pages, funny, and maybe not a world-beater, but still a pretty good way to pass the time. Like watching "The Night of the Hunter" or "Blue Velvet": American weird, not Continental weird.
It's 62 pages, funny, and maybe not a world-beater, but still a pretty good way to pass the time. Like watching "The Night of the Hunter" or "Blue Velvet": American weird, not Continental weird.
June 10, 2016
The entitled man's Alice in Wonderland, the illusions that strips away all pretense and leaves our author with nothing but scat and entitlement. Funny, crazy, offensive. I would never have read it had it not been included with Miss Lonelyhearts in a collection I bought. A fascinating little gem.
February 25, 2015
Totally awesome piece of weird/magical realism fiction. At least those are the genres I think it falls under. Under appreciated novel by West.
September 1, 2017
I think you should read Miss Lonelyhearts instead and skip this.
February 7, 2012
That title. From the moment you hear it, you cannot forget it. In a first year university course on contemporary American writing, one of the works we studied was West’s last novel, The Day of the Locust. The edition I bought of that work came with Balso Snell, and though I never got around to reading it then, the title remained lodged in memory. Sorting out my library the other week – most of my books have been stored in boxes since university, some years ago now – I discovered those books from that course, and I picked up West’s book, intending to read The Day of the Locust again: instead I went to Balso Snell, his first novel.
Reading the history of this work, one soon learns that it is indeed possible to forget the title of this work. West began work on Balso Snell as early as 1924, worked on it with more fervour during his stay in Paris in 1926 (one can easily imagine the writer in the city), and then completed it over two years in New York City. In 1929 West began trying to sell this short novella under the title The Journal of Balso Snell: he was rejected twice, but following a favourable appraisal by William Carlos Williams, Balso Snell was published in New York by the French publisher Contact Editions. The book sold less than 500 copies, and fell out of print. The Dream Life of Balso Snell remained unread and unpublished until a collected edition of his novels appeared decades after his death, in 1975.
Balso Snell is wandering in the grasslands around Troy when he discovers the Trojan Horse. Seeking entry, he tries each orifice, settling for the anus, leading to the first great line in this work: “the mouth was beyond his reach, the navel provided a cul-de-sac, and so, forgetting his dignity, he approached the last. O Anus Mirabilis!” In the horse Snell meets an array of people who tell their stories – and Snell begins to realise that these are all writers in need of an audience. Snell hears their tales and then discards them, nihilist in his approach, before ending in an orgiastic sexual embrace.
The above is a base summary of West’s novel, and it is obvious that critics have often interpreted it many ways. Leslie Fiedler sees the whole novel as “a fractured and dissolving parable of the very process by which the emancipated Jew enters into the world of Western Culture.” I read it in a similar manner – Snell is a writer trying to find his voice, and if everything that happens in the Trojan Horse is, as the title implies, the dream life of Balso Snell, then each encounter is a manifestation in his subconscious of various literary styles – the epistolary novel, the absurdist, the literary, the poetical – and his rejection of them. At the end of the novel Snell has not found his voice, or style, and instead chooses a sexual encounter – indicating that perhaps Snell has accepted living life over practising art. After all, at the very end, in a wonderful monologue, Snell proclaims: “And when dying, will you be able to say, I turn down an empty glass, having drunk to the full, lived to the full? Is it not madness to deny life?”
West said of this novel that it was a “protest against writing books”, and its structure, scatological detail and juvenile humour are designed to provoke and irritate as much as they are to entertain. It has produced some wonderful critical responses: some disregard it as merely “a sneer in the bathroom mirror at Art” (Alan Ross), “squalid and dreadful” (Harold Bloom) and “a hysterical, obscure, disgusted shriek against the intellect” (James F. Light). Responses to a work of art never cease amuse, and Balso Snell produces some wide ranging disagreement. The nihilism on display here is fascinating, and I have learnt it is more pronounced in his later novels. I responded warmly to Snell and his journey through the intestinal tract of the Trojan Horse – some of its ideas resonated deeply within me – but perhaps that is because I share similar beliefs.
In that university class all those years ago, I remember thinking The Day of the Locust was one of the great American novels of the twentieth century, and I think I subconscious avoided the others for fear they might not live up to that standard. Now, it is true that The Dream Life of Balso Snell is no Day of the Locust, it is nevertheless an interesting and provocative piece of work and one that I know I will read again. It reminded me of poetry, a work whose meaning is only truly deduced when every part has been processed: some of Snell will take a while to process. I look forward to reading the other two West novels, and then returning to The Day of the Locust.
Reading the history of this work, one soon learns that it is indeed possible to forget the title of this work. West began work on Balso Snell as early as 1924, worked on it with more fervour during his stay in Paris in 1926 (one can easily imagine the writer in the city), and then completed it over two years in New York City. In 1929 West began trying to sell this short novella under the title The Journal of Balso Snell: he was rejected twice, but following a favourable appraisal by William Carlos Williams, Balso Snell was published in New York by the French publisher Contact Editions. The book sold less than 500 copies, and fell out of print. The Dream Life of Balso Snell remained unread and unpublished until a collected edition of his novels appeared decades after his death, in 1975.
Balso Snell is wandering in the grasslands around Troy when he discovers the Trojan Horse. Seeking entry, he tries each orifice, settling for the anus, leading to the first great line in this work: “the mouth was beyond his reach, the navel provided a cul-de-sac, and so, forgetting his dignity, he approached the last. O Anus Mirabilis!” In the horse Snell meets an array of people who tell their stories – and Snell begins to realise that these are all writers in need of an audience. Snell hears their tales and then discards them, nihilist in his approach, before ending in an orgiastic sexual embrace.
The above is a base summary of West’s novel, and it is obvious that critics have often interpreted it many ways. Leslie Fiedler sees the whole novel as “a fractured and dissolving parable of the very process by which the emancipated Jew enters into the world of Western Culture.” I read it in a similar manner – Snell is a writer trying to find his voice, and if everything that happens in the Trojan Horse is, as the title implies, the dream life of Balso Snell, then each encounter is a manifestation in his subconscious of various literary styles – the epistolary novel, the absurdist, the literary, the poetical – and his rejection of them. At the end of the novel Snell has not found his voice, or style, and instead chooses a sexual encounter – indicating that perhaps Snell has accepted living life over practising art. After all, at the very end, in a wonderful monologue, Snell proclaims: “And when dying, will you be able to say, I turn down an empty glass, having drunk to the full, lived to the full? Is it not madness to deny life?”
West said of this novel that it was a “protest against writing books”, and its structure, scatological detail and juvenile humour are designed to provoke and irritate as much as they are to entertain. It has produced some wonderful critical responses: some disregard it as merely “a sneer in the bathroom mirror at Art” (Alan Ross), “squalid and dreadful” (Harold Bloom) and “a hysterical, obscure, disgusted shriek against the intellect” (James F. Light). Responses to a work of art never cease amuse, and Balso Snell produces some wide ranging disagreement. The nihilism on display here is fascinating, and I have learnt it is more pronounced in his later novels. I responded warmly to Snell and his journey through the intestinal tract of the Trojan Horse – some of its ideas resonated deeply within me – but perhaps that is because I share similar beliefs.
In that university class all those years ago, I remember thinking The Day of the Locust was one of the great American novels of the twentieth century, and I think I subconscious avoided the others for fear they might not live up to that standard. Now, it is true that The Dream Life of Balso Snell is no Day of the Locust, it is nevertheless an interesting and provocative piece of work and one that I know I will read again. It reminded me of poetry, a work whose meaning is only truly deduced when every part has been processed: some of Snell will take a while to process. I look forward to reading the other two West novels, and then returning to The Day of the Locust.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 19, 2015
Nathanael West is known best for "The Day of the Locust," and then probably "Miss Lonelyhearts." He only wrote four novels before his untimely death by head-on auto accident in 1940, none of them likely to keep your back door open on a gusty day. This one, his debut, is the smallest by far, clocking in at a sub-novella length of 59 pages. Still, it doesn't feel like a short story, just a short...thing.
What makes "Miss Lonelyhearts" and "Day of the Locust" so interesting (especially in light of his years of work as a screenwriter in Hollywood) is that they are, comparatively speaking, his crowd-pleaser works. His other two, "A Cool Million" and this one, are steeped in the language and meandering narrative of the Surrealists. Even the allusion to "Dream Life" in the title gives it away. This is a nocturnal flight of fancy.
Balso, a Greek poet, comes upon a Trojan Horse and climbs in through one of the three openings. Guess which one? I'll give you hint: he calls it the "Anus Mirabilis." And from there, we're off to the races, with a non-stop flurry of Greek classical allusion, scat jokes, unsettling diary entries, a biographer who is writing a biography of the biographer who wrote the biography of the biographer of Byron, a man who understands all five senses through an ultra-advanced sense of smell, and, to wrap it all up nicely, some hunchback seduction and a villain named Beagle Darwin.
There is a bit of lip service to dream logic -- near the end, a character from the middle of the book returns in a different guise -- but on the whole, the book feels like swinging from vine to vine in a forest that's on fire. Very little looking back, just a hysterical forward momentum in whatever direction keeps us away from the danger at our heels.
While hardly something I'll crack open all that often and marred by both its maddening shortness and a bit of West's usual knockin-the-womens-around hostility, it's an interesting read from a really weird dude, a sort of hypercompressed, all-American version of Lautremont's "Maldoror." Also, the high-low/poo-art see-saws predict Thomas Pynchon three decades hence.
What makes "Miss Lonelyhearts" and "Day of the Locust" so interesting (especially in light of his years of work as a screenwriter in Hollywood) is that they are, comparatively speaking, his crowd-pleaser works. His other two, "A Cool Million" and this one, are steeped in the language and meandering narrative of the Surrealists. Even the allusion to "Dream Life" in the title gives it away. This is a nocturnal flight of fancy.
Balso, a Greek poet, comes upon a Trojan Horse and climbs in through one of the three openings. Guess which one? I'll give you hint: he calls it the "Anus Mirabilis." And from there, we're off to the races, with a non-stop flurry of Greek classical allusion, scat jokes, unsettling diary entries, a biographer who is writing a biography of the biographer who wrote the biography of the biographer of Byron, a man who understands all five senses through an ultra-advanced sense of smell, and, to wrap it all up nicely, some hunchback seduction and a villain named Beagle Darwin.
There is a bit of lip service to dream logic -- near the end, a character from the middle of the book returns in a different guise -- but on the whole, the book feels like swinging from vine to vine in a forest that's on fire. Very little looking back, just a hysterical forward momentum in whatever direction keeps us away from the danger at our heels.
While hardly something I'll crack open all that often and marred by both its maddening shortness and a bit of West's usual knockin-the-womens-around hostility, it's an interesting read from a really weird dude, a sort of hypercompressed, all-American version of Lautremont's "Maldoror." Also, the high-low/poo-art see-saws predict Thomas Pynchon three decades hence.
December 3, 2022
You sense from this novella that Nathanael West really hated pretension. This is an over-the-top mockery of pomposity, self-importance and just about anyone who takes themselves too seriously on any ‘important’ subject; like, say: religion, death, love, god, beauty, art or sex. West adopts an ironically purple style, out purpling the purple, presenting them as ridiculous. He counsels instead: “Take your eyes off your navel. Take your head from under your armpit. Stop sniffing mortality. Play games. Don’t read so many books.” The pitfall here is that to mock erudition requires erudition, which West wields like a ninja. And a couple of times he does acknowledge a value in ‘discovering the real,’ which (I’m surmising) he believes pretension obscures.
June 2, 2015
intelligent, innovative, surreal, obsessive, short, unsatisfying work of an american in paris in 1920s. tale-within-a-tale theme reminded me of robert irwin, though i like his arab settings better. but you need to be in the right mood for that, which i'm not sure i ever am.
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December 1, 2025Absolutely zero comparisons to West’s other novels – OK, maybe touches of A Cool Million, but really out there on its own wavelengths. This shaggy horse story just kinda vibes and riffs, and I get what West was going for, but it just felt kinda cheap, a pale imitation of what European masters were doing earlier. Nathanael West is far better when he’s writing about the familiar territory of American loserdom than trying to go full-on European high art.
July 16, 2011
This is a greatly entertaining, snide, petulant, hilarious and rather tossed off little surrealist jig. It contains some great writing and great depravity: I am thinking specifically of one character’s first person account of why it was absolutely imperative to the preservation of his sanity that he murder a certain ‘idiot’ dishwasher of his acquaintance. The physical descriptions of this idiot’s neck do clearly justify murder. 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.
March 12, 2019
Balso Snell enters The Trojan Horse through the back end and meets a series of strange characters on a journey through its intestines. This frame caries us to things like a 7 foot hunchback with four rows of teeth, a twelve year old who may be a murderous psychopath, a flea that lived on the flesh of Christ and became a saint, and a biographer of biographers.
In many senses, this book extraordinarily ahead of its time. It was published in 1931 and written bit by bit in the 20s. The Dover jacket reports that Snell was inspired by the Dadaists, but some of what's in “The Dream Life of Balso Snell” strongly foreshadows the coming of the Beats two decades later. It's probably the self-conscious mix of references to Athenian classics combined with crass stuff about feces and sex.
The book is short and often hilarious, shifting between encounters and episodes, and sometimes sinking deeper into its digressions. To the weirdos he meets, Balso advises things like “eat more meat” or “play baseball”.
Even without the humor, West's writing here is an entertaining foray into the surreal, complete with dream-layers and parody of ivory tower intelligentsia.
Of Nathanael West's 4 works, I guess this one is considered the short end, so it should only get better from here.
In many senses, this book extraordinarily ahead of its time. It was published in 1931 and written bit by bit in the 20s. The Dover jacket reports that Snell was inspired by the Dadaists, but some of what's in “The Dream Life of Balso Snell” strongly foreshadows the coming of the Beats two decades later. It's probably the self-conscious mix of references to Athenian classics combined with crass stuff about feces and sex.
The book is short and often hilarious, shifting between encounters and episodes, and sometimes sinking deeper into its digressions. To the weirdos he meets, Balso advises things like “eat more meat” or “play baseball”.
Even without the humor, West's writing here is an entertaining foray into the surreal, complete with dream-layers and parody of ivory tower intelligentsia.
Of Nathanael West's 4 works, I guess this one is considered the short end, so it should only get better from here.
October 23, 2019
Βαθμολογία: 5/10
Τέταρτο βιβλίο του Ναθάναελ Γουέστ και κάπως έτσι ολοκληρώνω τη βιβλιογραφία του, μιας και ο άνθρωπος έγραψε όλα κι όλα τέσσερα βιβλία στη (δυστυχώς) σύντομη ζωή του. Συνήθως τα καλά τα αφήνω για το τέλος (π.χ. στο φαγητό), όμως εδώ άφησα για το τέλος το πιο μέτριο έργο του. Τουλάχιστον έτσι φάνηκε σε μένα, μιας και μπορεί κάποιος να το βρει αριστούργημα. Ανάθεμα και αν κατάλαβα τι ακριβώς ήθελε να πει ο ποιητής. Σε μερικά σημεία κάτι έπιασα, αλλά γενικά χάθηκα στην όλη παραληρηματική και σουρεαλιστική φαντασία του συγγραφέα. Δεν λέω, υπήρχαν ορισμένα σημεία που μου άρεσαν (κυρίως μεμονωμένες εικόνες και σκηνές), όμως σαν σύνολο με άφησε μπερδεμένο και ολίγον τι κουρασμένο. Και αμφιβάλλω πολύ αν φταίει που δεν είχα την κατάλληλη διάθεση: Αντίθετα, δεν πιστεύω ότι υπάρχει κατάλληλη κατάσταση για μένα, όσον αφορά το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο. Απλά δεν ταίριαξαν τα γούστα μας. Και είναι κρίμα, γιατί τα άλλα τρία βιβλία του Γουέστ μου άρεσαν αρκετά έως πάρα πολύ. Πάντως, στο άμεσο μέλλον έχω σκοπό να διαβάσω ξανά το "Το άγριο Χόλιγουντ", ένα πραγματικά εξαιρετικό έργο.
Τέταρτο βιβλίο του Ναθάναελ Γουέστ και κάπως έτσι ολοκληρώνω τη βιβλιογραφία του, μιας και ο άνθρωπος έγραψε όλα κι όλα τέσσερα βιβλία στη (δυστυχώς) σύντομη ζωή του. Συνήθως τα καλά τα αφήνω για το τέλος (π.χ. στο φαγητό), όμως εδώ άφησα για το τέλος το πιο μέτριο έργο του. Τουλάχιστον έτσι φάνηκε σε μένα, μιας και μπορεί κάποιος να το βρει αριστούργημα. Ανάθεμα και αν κατάλαβα τι ακριβώς ήθελε να πει ο ποιητής. Σε μερικά σημεία κάτι έπιασα, αλλά γενικά χάθηκα στην όλη παραληρηματική και σουρεαλιστική φαντασία του συγγραφέα. Δεν λέω, υπήρχαν ορισμένα σημεία που μου άρεσαν (κυρίως μεμονωμένες εικόνες και σκηνές), όμως σαν σύνολο με άφησε μπερδεμένο και ολίγον τι κουρασμένο. Και αμφιβάλλω πολύ αν φταίει που δεν είχα την κατάλληλη διάθεση: Αντίθετα, δεν πιστεύω ότι υπάρχει κατάλληλη κατάσταση για μένα, όσον αφορά το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο. Απλά δεν ταίριαξαν τα γούστα μας. Και είναι κρίμα, γιατί τα άλλα τρία βιβλία του Γουέστ μου άρεσαν αρκετά έως πάρα πολύ. Πάντως, στο άμεσο μέλλον έχω σκοπό να διαβάσω ξανά το "Το άγριο Χόλιγουντ", ένα πραγματικά εξαιρετικό έργο.
January 26, 2013
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 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. Nice to meet you again, Mr. West.
September 3, 2013
Bizarre yet engaging. Nihilistic for sure, but: “And when dying, will you be able to say, I turn down an empty glass, having drunk to the full, lived to the full? Is it not madness to deny life?”
January 12, 2022
This guy Basho enters the Trojan Horse via its anus, meeting extremely weird people inside. It's a very surreal and anarchist anti-novel of a book. I loved some of the humour and the author's imagination, but found some parts too heavy, despite the book's shortness. Delightfully weird nevertheless.
December 24, 2019
Puerile, nihilistic, anti-art. Our hero wades through surreal shit, meeting various writers, before finally escaping from art into sex.
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July 15, 2020The Dream Life of Balso Snell by Nathanael West
The missing link between Dostoyevsky and Mad magazine.
Was West really the suicidal, woman-slapping, self-despising jerk-bucket he seems to be in this book? The answer is probably in Wikipedia…
Opening at random:
“His nose was a marvelously sensitive and nice instrument. Nature had concentrated in his sense of smell all the abilities usually distributed among the five senses. She had strengthened this organ and had made it so sensitive that it was able to do duty for all the contact organs. Perkins was able to translate the sensations, sound, sight, taste, and touch, into that of smell. He could smell a chord in D minor, or distinguish between the tone-smell of a violin and that of a viola.”
The missing link between Dostoyevsky and Mad magazine.
Was West really the suicidal, woman-slapping, self-despising jerk-bucket he seems to be in this book? The answer is probably in Wikipedia…
Opening at random:
“His nose was a marvelously sensitive and nice instrument. Nature had concentrated in his sense of smell all the abilities usually distributed among the five senses. She had strengthened this organ and had made it so sensitive that it was able to do duty for all the contact organs. Perkins was able to translate the sensations, sound, sight, taste, and touch, into that of smell. He could smell a chord in D minor, or distinguish between the tone-smell of a violin and that of a viola.”
February 26, 2018
Ermmm... I'm sure there were a ton of allusions in here that I just didn't get. What I was able to get, though, was complete nonsense and absurdity. Some of it was entertaining, and some not. It wasn't Terrible, but I was also glad it was a short story.
January 6, 2015
At 50 pages, West's early, surreal parody of literary genres is exactly the right length. I laughed, I was impressed, and just as I started to lose patience with it, it was over.
decided-against
November 13, 2019Even more bizarre and crass than I’m used to from West.
October 22, 2023
Too clever for its own good. Out of the two West novelas that hardly get read A Cool Million is streets ahead.
July 16, 2025
This book reads like a more modern 'Candide' (except not nearly as good). The journey begins through the Anus of a Trojan Horse and continues in an episodic nature where Balso Snell encounters a series of ridiculous characters or "writers in search of an audience".
While Candide criticized multiple philosophies that were trendy at the time along with religious and social institutions, West hones in on the (over-)intellectualism of the modern literary era.
In the a similar way one might describe a piece of work as a "love letter to [its medium]", 'The Dream Life of Balso Snell' could be considered a nihilistic hate letter to literature and art.
Writing overly conscious about themes is satirized as well; the one character who asks Balso "What do you think of my theme?" is a 12 year old boy looking to sleep with his school teacher and thus composes a pastiche of Dostoevsky to appeal to her love for Russian novels. A more current day equivalent would be the "performative males" reading feminist lit with their matcha while listening to Clairo on their wired headphones.
This is West's first novel and the first Ive read of him as well. Excited to read 'Miss Lonelyhearts'and 'The Day of the Locust' and see how they compare to this book.
While Candide criticized multiple philosophies that were trendy at the time along with religious and social institutions, West hones in on the (over-)intellectualism of the modern literary era.
In the a similar way one might describe a piece of work as a "love letter to [its medium]", 'The Dream Life of Balso Snell' could be considered a nihilistic hate letter to literature and art.
Writing overly conscious about themes is satirized as well; the one character who asks Balso "What do you think of my theme?" is a 12 year old boy looking to sleep with his school teacher and thus composes a pastiche of Dostoevsky to appeal to her love for Russian novels. A more current day equivalent would be the "performative males" reading feminist lit with their matcha while listening to Clairo on their wired headphones.
This is West's first novel and the first Ive read of him as well. Excited to read 'Miss Lonelyhearts'and 'The Day of the Locust' and see how they compare to this book.
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January 29, 2018Hysterical, vicious. An elaborate series of very cruel jokes about the pointless futility of writing and of art more generally. There's nothing really by way of story, just a lot of peculiar asides and a pretty fabulous Dostoevsky impression. West is one of the better comic writers I think I ever read, laugh out loud funny. Keep.
November 4, 2024
The worst book I’ll give 2*.
But some of the sentences are piercing, while the set ups can be literally laugh out loud. But ultimately the prose is loose and too often wearying and overwrought.
It is the equivalent of an uncoordinated fat man on a tennis court, who has been gifted Richard Gasquet’s backhand.
But some of the sentences are piercing, while the set ups can be literally laugh out loud. But ultimately the prose is loose and too often wearying and overwrought.
It is the equivalent of an uncoordinated fat man on a tennis court, who has been gifted Richard Gasquet’s backhand.
Read
October 17, 2025Okay this was wild and weird and all over the place, but "fun", I guess. Nathanael West has an interesting brain. Plays around with the idea of the novel, of Dostoyevski, goes to eight different directions at once but at the same time manages to keep a consistent tone of voice. And it's very fun. Hilarious, even. But very heavy for such a light novel.
March 17, 2019
I made the smooth-reading of this book for Distributed Proofreaders Canada and it will be published by FadedPage.
December 5, 2024
Totally went over my head. Maybe a parody of modernism?
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