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why you hating on optimsim?
Nathanael West takes a huge shot at capitalism and optimism in his book A Cool Million. West seemed to have no faith in capitalism. The hero, Pitkin was a poor boy coming from small town with a dream of going to New York to make his fortune. This is still today a dream of many. The struggling actress from Ohio who moves to New York to make it big. I feel optimism is very important. What else do we have? We must look forward to little things on the way to striving for big things. If you have no optimism than what are you living for? You never think you can improve yourself and go anywhere. Usually with stories such as this, all this pain and suffering leads our hero to prosperity at the end, but in A Cool Million this is not the case. West goes out of his way to never allow any happiness. As soon as two friends unite they lose each other or everytime our hero gets money he soon falls victim to a scam and loses it. 
I come from the idealist American school of work hard, and you can make good money. I know this is not always true, and there are many fallacies with the American dream, but I still think that a capitalist society is the strongest of the other alternates. On both sides my grandparents were immigrants born in other countries. They came from Italy and Russia with no money and lived in Brooklyn. My parents did not have a lot of money growing up, but both of them worked extremely hard and got to were they wanted. They were driven by extreme optimism, with the idea that things would get better. Even if things didn’t get better they needed to believe this just to get through life. In their case, they were lucky enough that in the end they were rewarded with good jobs and the American Dream. I believe West makes good points, and American life may not be so easy to achieve, but why make fun of those who have optimism especially if its all they have. West is almost making fun of Pitkin for having so much optimism even after all the horrors he went through. When a person still has optimism after all that people may call that person dumb, but I would rather give them credit for keeping their head up. Keep the faith, for what else do we really have?
From the Pessimist HQ
Yes. Optimism is important, but pessimism is more important. People need to wake up and realize where they belong in society. If you're coming into America or you've lost all your money in the gambling zones, you should expect to start at the very bottom, and hopefully stay there for the rest of your life, understanding that even standing on the same soil as Bill Gates, Dick Cheney or the Kennedys is a blessing. These are our Gods, and were never poor ever. Bill Gates was born at home in a blow-up above ground pool full of five dollar bills. Dick Cheney's first words as a child were recorded and transposed into the biggest economics textbook in history. So, as you can see, the heros of American capitalism are probably more pessimistic than anything, because all they have to worry about are people taking their money. Wait, maybe they're optimistic, because you have to be open to the fact that people want to take your money if you're going to guard it anyways.
Life is not Always Happy
I hate to have to disagree with you, because I think that makes me the ultimate pessimist. However, West's work must be taken as a satire of the American dream. Out of that context, yes he seems to be mocking Lem Pitkin, but he is really mocking all of America. Sometimes pure optimism just isn't enough, and I think that is one of the main points of his book. The American Dream does not work out for everyone, a sad but true fact of our reality, even today. I applaud and admire your opinion and wish I could share it; I also applaud your family for being able to accomplish so much with so little. But for many people it is just not possible, and to me that's all West is trying to say.