After reading Miss Lonelyhearts and The Dream Life of Balso Snell, I was left thinking “this Nathanael West dude is ten shades of grim, but at least he’s got a sense of humour about it.” Reading West’s third novel, A Cool Million, reaffirms this thought. West isn’t afraid to drag his characters through physical and mental hell, but somehow – mainly due to his use of black humour – he doesn’t take the reader on the same trip. Apparently A Cool Million is a “brutal satire of Horatio Alger’s novels of eternal optimism”, but as I’m not familiar with Alger’s work (or, heh, eternal optimism), much of the commentary on this level eludes my understanding. However, A Cool Million works as a dissection of hopeful gullibility and blind faith in strangers, tearing down the American dream of striking it rich.

Lemuel Pitkin is the hopeless hopeful of A Cool Million, a young boy who sets out on the advice of his admired elders to make money to save his family home from being repossessed. But this isn’t the story of a young scout making his fortune through hard work and sheer determination, rather our friend Lem inherently trusts everyone he meets – and is taken advantage of in every manner possible. Lem trusts the insight of his elders, especially the wacky Mr. Shagpoke Whipple who leads him in the wrong direction every single time. Lem’s lack of consciousness and awareness of the greed and deceit of others is astounding. Not only does our man Lem lose his money, over and over, but he loses his eye, his teeth, his thumb, his leg and his scalp, but never his blind hope; the same cannot be said for his dignity.

Lem lost track of Mr. Whipple when the meeting broke up, and was unable to find him again although he searched everywhere. As he wandered around, he was shot at several times, and it was only by the greatest of good luck that he succeeded in escaping with his life.
He managed this by walking to the nearest town that had a depot and there taking the first train bound northeast. Unfortunately, all his money had been lost in the opera house fire and he was unable to pay for a ticket. The conductor, however, was a good-natured man. Seeing that the lad had only one leg, he waited until the train slowed down at a curve before throwing him off.

It’s not only Lem that suffers misfortune at the hands of others – his sweetheart Betty is beaten and sold as a sex slave into a brothel that features a woman from every country on earth. When chance gives Lem the opportunity to rescue her, he fails in his mission and instead is put to work in the brothel as well – only to disgust a rich maharajah when his teeth and glass eye fall out. It seems somehow fitting that Lem ends up in the entertainment industry, at first as a sideshow feature (the last man to be scalped by Indians!) and then as a stooge for a comedy duo. Then he is shot, on stage while giving a political speech to incite favour for Whipple’s new political party, by a mysterious figure who has shown up previously. In death, Lem becomes a martyr for Whipple’s cause and they sing celebratory songs in his honour.

I can’t help but wonder whether, as it seems  much of A Cool Million‘s commentary seems to rely on a knowledge of Horatio Alger’s novels, that it loses some of the urgency or power without this point of reference. That A Cool Million appears to be one of West’s minor works – in an oeuvre of four short novels – seems to confirm this suspicion. However, if you like your fiction bleak, your protagonist downtrodden (and then some), and your pessimism reaffirmed – A Cool Million is a comedy of the blackest variety.