[McMURTRY, Larry (1936-2021), his copy]. WEST, Nathanael (1903-1940). The Dream Life of Balso Snell. New York and Paris: Contact Editions, [1931]. FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, number 316 of 500 copies of WEST?S FIRST BOOK. In Freudenberger and Stein?s Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books (2019), McMurtry talks of not burdening his heirs with his 30,000-book library at his home in Archer City but there were a select few that he would never sell: ?Nathanael West?s four novels would be ones I wouldn?t part with: The Dream Life of Balso Snell; Miss Lonelyhearts; A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin; and The Day of the Locust. Other than those volumes, my library is, you might say, ?a vibrant intellectual ecosystem??. White 1.