The introduction to the Wordsworth Classics edition says of Balso Snell that,
To call this a work of precocious undergraduate humour might seem ungenerous to both undergraduates and their literary efforts. One critic, Daniel Aaron, reviewing it in 1947, called it 'scatalogical and pretentiously wise' and this is such an exact judgement that it demands little elaboration.
Snell's adventures having entered the Trojan horse via its posterior aperture result in encounters with literature and ideas that are ingenious in parts, taken to extremes and sometimes cleverly funny. That doesn't add up to a satisfactory work but it's only 20000 words and so one can stay with it. If it's a critique of literary endeavours then its gaucheness can be explained away as an element of its methods. If it is deliberately appalling some might count such appallingness as part of its success. The thing about 'experimental' writing is that there is no need for it to see print unless the experiment came off. As such, it's hard to like but of interest in its strangeness.
All of West's stories end in violence, as if some terrible end is inevitable. In A Cool Million, Lem Pitkin sets off to New York to make his fortune, as promised by the American Dream. Through a terrible series of misadventures he loses an eye, half a leg, his teeth, is scalped but remains undaunted as his ongoing disfigurement proceeds. It is a cartoon-like inversion of the myth that anybody can make it in New York. His death is not the end of his debasement, though, as he is taken up as a symbolic hero by the National Revolutionary Party, the vehicle for an ex-President that has loud echoes in the USA today, who proclaim that,
'He did not die in vain. Through his martyrdom, the National Revolutionary Party triumphed, and by that triumph this country was delivered from sophistication, Marxism and International Capitalism. Through the National Revolution its people were purged of alien diseases and America became again America.'
That sounds familiar and if the current incumbent was thought to have read any literary fiction, you'd think he'd read that. Thus, while The Day of the Locust is a fine book and Miss Lonelyhearts a success, it's almost in West's more dubious books that he's more interesting. Neither Balso Snell or Cool Million add much to his literary reputation but the former adds the dimension of surrealism and a genuine shock value and the latter by now looks prescient about MAGA and all the unhinged mania that comes with it.
I don't need to make room for West in the top echelon of my favourite prose fiction writers. It's by no means as fixed a list as its poetry equivalent anyway. But there was enjoyment to be had in reading him and I'm glad I did.
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Next up, seized upon in the Chichester Oxfam shop because I was in the market for it anyway, Marco Polo's Travels. I'm expecting something picaresque and unlikely-sounding from him, too.
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But last night. well on the way to justifying the licence fee on its own, the Radio 3 concert was Tenebrae with the Britten Sinfonia doing James MacMillan's Seven Last Words from the Cross, the Allegri Miserere and other almost as compelling pieces.
It must be approaching thirty years since the MacMillan was broadcast late one night and the first disc of it subsequently appeared. It comes now with the big advantage of being familiar but that brings with it no trace of contempt, only a deeper thrill, if anything. A colossal piece that is both austere and shines forth. There is The Protecting Veil, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Errollyn Wallen, the Philip Glass Violin Concerto but MacMillan, with Veni, Veni and Isobel Gowdie to be taken into consideration, has provided music as memorable and powerful as any living composer.
Worth looking up.
