Customer Reviews

A Cool Million and The Dream Life of Balso Snell: Two Novels

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although he was little known during his short lifetime, Nathanael West's MISS LONELYHEARTS and THE DAY OF THE LOCUST are two of the most influential works of 20th Century American Literature. They are the best of West's work, and I recommend them very highly. But West's work was extremely hit or miss, and this edition of his two lesser novels demonstrate that fact in abundance.

THE DREAM LIFE OF BALSO SNELL is West's first novel, a surrealistic fantasy about a man who stumbles upon the Trojan Horse, climbs into the rectum, and meanders through the horse's lower intestines. Along the way he meets an aesthetically argumentative guide, a biographer who is writing a biography of a biographer, a mystic who is attempting to crucify himself with thumbtacks, and sundry others. There is an abundance of ideas here, some of them quite amusing and entertaining, but ultimately this parody of bad-taste pseudo-intellectualism becomes as bad-taste pseudo-intellectual as its subjects.

Written between MISS LONELYHEARTS and LOCUST, A COOL MILLION satirizes the American dream via an extended parody of the Horatio Alger myth, and presents us with the story of a young man who goes out into the world to seek his fortune--and begins his adventures with his lady love sold into white slavery and he himself cast wrongfully into prison. This is an extremely bitter, often funny novel, and it is considerably more readable than BALSO SNELL, but its dryness quickly becomes tedious and the work lags far, far behind either MISS LONELYHEARTS or LOCUST.

These novels are interesting failures at best, and while West fans will enjoy seeing how the writer developed but both THE DREAM LIFE OF BALSO SNELL and A COOL MILLION have more academic interest than anything else. Recommended for hardcore fans, but all others should pass them by.

Having read all four of West's novels, I feel that "A Cool Million" is easily the greatest of his works. It presents a sarcastic and cynical view of life in America during the 1930's. The novel is, by the way, a modernization of "Candide," by Voltaire, and it is still fresh after sixty-five years. West is second only to Mark Twain in identifying and attacking society's corruption and vices. The book only gets four stars, however, because it also includes West's worst novel, "The Dream Life of Balso Snell," which is a complete waste of his talents. "Balso Snell" is completely disjointed and unorganized. The main character wanders around inside of a wooden horse and meets various allegorical losers. Now you do not have to read "Balso Snell", because I have just told you the entire story. That the author could produce two works which are such polar opposites in quality and readability is surprising. Buy this book for "Cool Million" - you will not regret it!

Former President of the United States Nathan "Shagpoke" Whipple, now C.E.O. of the Rat River National Bank of the town of Ottsville, Vermont, tells young Lemuel Pitkin, "The story of (John D.) Rockefeller and of (Henry) Ford is the story of every great American...Like them, you were born poor and on a farm. Like them, by honesty and industry, you cannot fail to succeed."

With this advice in hand thus begins Lem's journey to secure his fortune and to prevent the foreclosure on his mother's house. The only collateral Lem can put up for the tiny loan he obtains from Whipple's bank is the family cow. After all, according to the ex-President, you must have some money in order to make money.

"A Cool Million" is Nathanael West's mordantly witty and deeply bitter satire of a decent, but profoundly naive young man's attempts to achieve the American Dream during the darkest days of the Great Depression. West effectively lampoons the false promise of the old maxim that hard work and diligence equals success in America. For all his determination, Lem suffers one horrible indignity after another and is ripped to shreds in the process. A pawn in a facist plot to take over New York City, his final achievement is an unintended martyrdom.

The only thing that prevents me from giving this small gem a 5 star review is the constant feeling of dread that I felt in the pit of my stomach while reading this extraordinarily disturbing novella.

'The Dream Life of Balso Snell' is an incoherent and nearly unintelligible narrative of a man, Balso, who discovers the Trojan horse and climbs into the body through the anus. Inside, he encounters different characters, which he soon realizes symbolize different types of writers, and has long, rambling, allegorical conversations with them. I had a difficult time finishing this book, and seriously considered putting it down. Whatever merits it possesses are soon lost in the juvenile and amateurish writing (in fairness, this was West's first book), and the scatological references quickly grow tiring to this reader. As a parody of surrealist or absurdist or even modernist literature, 'Balso Snell' may have its points, but I simply couldn't sustain interest in its mode of delivery, nor the concentration necessary to puzzle out his references. And although some critics and reviewers describe 'Balso' as a comic novel, West's attempts at humor struck me as sophomoric and puerile. Were 'The Dream Life of Balso Snell' the only novel here, I would rate it one star, as my time is better spent on too many other things.

'A Cool Million' somewhat rescues this volume if I take into consideration its historical context, and, in the used edition that I have, it's apparent by the marginalia that someone used it for a literature class, which indicates that there is at least one teacher who also feels it has something to say about the times. My assessment though is that there must be better examples than what West attempted with 'Million' from which to choose, but I can also see that, in the interest of adding variety to the syllabus year after year, an instructor might include 'Million' as an example critiquing the American Dream.

I've heard 'Horatio Alger story in reverse' connected to 'Million' a few times, but its style reminds me more of 'Candide 'instead (as another reviewer pointed out). The subtitle to the novel, 'The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin' is surely accurate, and much like Voltaire's novel, the hero begins with a positive and naive view of the world, given to him by an older, seemingly wiser man. Lemuel Pitkin then strikes out on his own to make his fortune, but runs into one horrible circumstance after another, as do his motley collection of friends and acquaintances, and his ladylove. Again, as in 'Candide', Lem never loses his positive outlook, no matter what terrible thing happens, and eventually reaches as spot that might parallel the point at which Candide and his friends reach their final destination and begin a little farm. Except in 'A Cool Million', Lem isn't allowed to simply 'tend to his garden', and the cruel world continues to dismantle him.

Overall, I disliked 'Million' for its excruciating treatment of its characters, but I did find his examination of how martyrs are constructed interesting. West, quite cynically, is not only giving us an unvarnished look as the American Dream, but also a look at the way examples are held up to succeeding generations as someone to emulate, even though those same examples never sought out their troubles, and would have strongly wished for their lives to be different. It's as if, even after they are dead and gone, the world continues to use them as it will.

Whether as a parody of 'Candide' or of Horatio Alger, ultimately I thought West's style in 'Million' came across as affected and too clever. Despite any insights I detected in this second novel, mentally I shrug my shoulders at the end and think 'it's ok'.

[NOTE: This review refers only to A Cool Million.]

Nathanael West, A Cool Million (Berkeley, 1934)

Despite having published less than six hundred pages of material in his short and rather unhappy life, Nathanael West is revered in critical circles for two groundbreaking American novels, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust. West published three other novels during his lifetime, and while Lonelyhearts and Locust are constantly in print, the others-- The Dream Life of Balso Snell, A Cool Million, and Good Hunting-- are considerably harder to get hold of. (There is a hardcover edition of four of the novels, excluding Good Hunting, in print from the library of America.) Reading A Cool Million, it's not hard to see why it might not be as popular as his two better-known works.

A Cool Million is a vicious satire of the Horatio Alger stereotypes popular during the Depression, the endless stories of how anyone with enough gumption could succeed in America. West takes an Alger-like hero, Lemuel Pitkin, and sends him on his way to the big city to make his fortune (actually, he's after $1500, but we'll put that aside). By the time he reaches the big city, he's been robbed and arrested. And things only get worse from there. The supporting cast contains not a single likable character (by design) save Pitkin, who's more pathetic than likable, and his childhood sweetheart, whom we first meet as she's being abducted by white slavers to work in a Chinese brothel. Everyone's out for something, and most of them seem to wact to extract it from poor Pitkin.

It is satire that, by turns, treads the edge and hops over it into that fuzzy area where one can't be sure whether West is still being satirical, or whether he's letting a nasty streak of his own show. This far removed from the book's timeliness and publication date, only scholars can be sure, and thus the book doesn't hold up as well as it otherwise might. But if you're not a fan of the Horatio Alger mythology, this should be right up your alley. **

While "Balso Snell" is funny in a late-Mark Twain kind of way, the real reason to buy this book is "A Cool Million," the Great American Political Satire. Written in the 1930's (and if you know anything about the wacko American Right of that decade, you'll realize that West is not exaggerrating too much) "A Cool Million" still packs a satirical punch. This is probably because, unfortunately, the right-wing wackos West skewers have now taken over the American asylum...

You know that intellectojerk that you went to school with, the 'tortured artist' kid? He wrote a book; and, boy, is it good! Read it to your kids while they're falling asleep.