Certainly lacking in contrast, both of these works percolate in the fears and insecurities of not only a nation unsure of regaining its footing, there is something fundamental in his horror, Edmund Wilson was correct, West was our Kafka. ( )

Overall, pretty disappointing if you are looking for something as interesting as Day of the Locust.

A Cool Million (* 1/2)
Naive Lemuel Pitkin heads out to the big city to earn enough money to keep the home he and his mother rent from being sold out from under them. Along the way, he is assisted (?) by a peculiar ex-President who draws him into a radical new political movement. The series of injuries Lemuel suffers become more and more extreme as he is taken advantage of by a series of con men or is blamed for something he didn't do. Clearly West intends this as a great, rollicking black satire of Depression-era America, with Communists and Jewish bankers as the cartoon villains. It just doesn't work, however. We may stand and marvel at the goings on a little bit, but there is nothing really here to see. And it isn't that you can't write a compelling novel about the Depression that still resonates in the 21st Century. Try Edward Anderson's HUNGRY MEN instead.

The Dream Life of Balso Snell (** 1/2)
I was tempted to give up on this one after a few pages as it started off in a rather tedious manner. Balso stumbles across the Trojan Horse and enters through its anus, where he runs into a number of strange characters with stories to tell. It is all very stream-of-consciousness and appears to be a random collection of things that West may have written some other time and is just pasting in, but it does take on a certain rhythm and momentum as it goes along, and there are some pretty humorous moments, mostly consisting of incongruous lists, as well as good insight into living your life in literature rather than in the real world, love, and suicide. I can't say it is all that good in the end, but at least it didn't leave me exasperated as A Cool Million did! ( )

A Cool Million is an unsubtle but funny parody of Horatio Alger-style rags-to-riches tales; The Dream Life of Balso Snell is a bizarre early effort without plot or much interest. It goes almost without saying that neither is remotely equal to Miss Lonelyhearts or The Day of The Locust, but then very few books are. ( )