The Dream Life of Balso Snell In this Dada inspired work the first novel of the author of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust the eponymous anti hero stumbles across the Trojan Horse and climbs inside His journey ta

In this 1931 Dada inspired work, the first novel of the author of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, the eponymous anti hero stumbles across the Trojan Horse and climbs inside His journey takes him through a mental jungle, offering an unforgettable look at the dark side of the American dream.
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The Dream Life of Balso Snell >> Nathanael West
290 Nathanael West
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Title: The Dream Life of Balso Snell >> Nathanael West
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Published :2019-09-04T17:11:27+00:00
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 New York, 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.