POET'S PROGRESS

by

Allison Sylvia

    Nathanael West's first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell, was digested by the engine of Criticism as 'immature scatological humor' : a proof of the failure of art that succeeded only by 'failing at it' (Klug 20). Bemoaning this failure, Snell 'blames the decline of the western world, commercialism, and, finally for throwing the artist back on his own personality, the renaissance' (LOA 29). Empirically we can see history as a GREAT OSCILLATION forever flowing from DESTRUCTION to Criticism to Renaissance. Dream Life is the Modernist addition to the progression of Western Literature which peaks with each POET : suDDenly Self awAre. Nathanael West was a POET unfortunate enough to write from an age of Criticism on the heels of the high Modernists whose Renaissance followed the Great War.  In an Age of Criticism, the Horses.of.Instruction DECREE : 'there can be nothing new' and.of course.poopoo.there can be no rOOm for the lyric pOet.Thus, with Dream Life, West did exactly what Criticism expected of him - 

he SHIT on Everything that came before. 

    . I MUST DO MY HOMEWORK .

This TIME has tOld the risE of the gODdess.