Too Far West?

Extreme Stereotype: West could have used this!Nathaniel West's A Cool Million is anything but your run of the mill Depression era proletarian novel. In fact, it not only satirizes proletarian novels, but also pokes fun at the "American Dream" and the belief that American society operates on the basis of merit and that anyone can be socially mobile. West's tone drips with sarcasm and even at times disdain, and I have to say that though the novel's brutality is at time quite humorous, I think it's possible that Nathaniel West may have gone too far.

A Cool Million was modeled on Horatio Alger's novels from earlier in the century, in which optimism is lauded and America is one happy meritocracy. However, West's novel warps Alger's model, and so many misfortunes befall the relentlessly optimistic protagonist, that one would expect him to give up, yet the he doesn't and finally ends up toothless, limbless, scalpless and dead, having accomplished none of his original goals. Though the reader does not easily identify with the protagonist Lemuel Pitkin, he ends up so mutilated and having lost so much, that one cannot help but feel slightly angry at the author...did he really have to inflict such pain upon his character?!

West was also criticized by many critics for having satirized racists and certain political and social factions too much. Throughout the novel he slanders Jews, Italians, Blacks, Communists, Facists, Chinese...you name it, he criticizes it. But at some point do his jabs cease to be funny? Do his satirically racist remarks actually hit a nerve? Is it possible that West wanted them to? Personally I found his sarcastic racism amusing at first, but after a while it got tiresome. I got his point, but his desire to satirize got in the way of telling the story....though, now I think about it, maybe his whole point was simply to expose and make fun of all these prejudices, not in fact to tell a story at all. After all, A Cool Million doesn't really have much rising action, a climax or even much of a conclusion.

I did a little bit of research on Horatio Alger that proved to reveal some interesting details. Apparently after attending Harvard Divinity School he took a position at a Unitarian Church but resigned a couple years later because he had had inappropriate relationships with some teenage boys! In fact church official wrote to the hierarchy in Boston complaining that "Horatio Alger, Jr. has been practicing on [the boys of the church] at different times deeds that are too revolting to relate." Nevertheless, they are related: "gross immorality, and a most heinous crime, a crime of no less magnitude than the abominable and revolting crime of unnatural familiarity with boys ... which he neither denied or attempted to extenuate but received it with apparent calmness of an old offender – and hastily left town on the very next train for parts unknown". He later moved to New York City and spent time working at the Newsboys' Lodging House and spent a great deal of time with the newsboys themselves. It was this gritty reality that prompted him to begin writing his stories about young hard-up boys.

I wonder if Nathaniel West knew about this when he modeled his novel after Alger's stories, and if so, was he satirizing more than just the eternal optimism of Alger's characters???