Robert M. (shotokanchef) reviewed A Cool Million and The Dream Life of Balso Snell: Two Novels on + 813 more book reviews
The Dream Life of Balso Snell
First off, this loser is no Walter Mitty. In his dream world, he enters the Trojan horse from the wrong (stern) end. Traveling through the internal corridor, he has a series of weird encounters with a series of weirder artisans. Second, this is the worst poppycock that anyone could possibly conjure up: loutish and nonsensical; purportedly written as a protest against novelists. As a first effort (?) by an unknown writer, it is amazing that it was ever published (let alone reissued in a Library of America edition). It must have made everyone scream, particularly his publisher.
A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin
"Now for something different." This is merely a mindless little satire on the boyhood stories of Horatio Alger. West's hero is constantly foiled, dismembered, and abused in his quest for the "American Dream", apple pie, and love; his love interest (the heroine) being consistently raped, sold into white slavery, and finally becoming a prostitute of sorts to politics. So ends the American dream as seen through the glass eye of Mr. West.
First off, this loser is no Walter Mitty. In his dream world, he enters the Trojan horse from the wrong (stern) end. Traveling through the internal corridor, he has a series of weird encounters with a series of weirder artisans. Second, this is the worst poppycock that anyone could possibly conjure up: loutish and nonsensical; purportedly written as a protest against novelists. As a first effort (?) by an unknown writer, it is amazing that it was ever published (let alone reissued in a Library of America edition). It must have made everyone scream, particularly his publisher.
A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin
"Now for something different." This is merely a mindless little satire on the boyhood stories of Horatio Alger. West's hero is constantly foiled, dismembered, and abused in his quest for the "American Dream", apple pie, and love; his love interest (the heroine) being consistently raped, sold into white slavery, and finally becoming a prostitute of sorts to politics. So ends the American dream as seen through the glass eye of Mr. West.
