With A Cool Million, Nathanael West mocks and perverts the Horatio Alger myth. The novella unravels the sad story of Lemuel Pitkin, a poor 17-year-old kid from rural New England. When creditors threaten to foreclose on his family home, young Pitkin seeks the advice of the local banker, Shagpoke Whipple, an opportunistic former president of the United States. At Whipple's urging, Pitkin heads out into the world to make his way. But the world thoroughly abuses and victimizes Pitkin: he is robbed, arrested, and beaten; he loses limbs and teeth; even his naive sweetheart is raped and prostituted. Pitkin learns nothing for his trouble and soon dies a humiliated failure. As if that was not enough, Pitkin's death is exploited by Shagpoke Whipple in his political comeback as head of the National Revolutionary Party.Whipple, embarking on his second act, attributes his initial downfall to conspiring outsiders:
I blame Wall Street and the Jewish international bankers. They loaded me up with a lot of European and South American bonds, then they forced me to the wall. It was Wall Street working hand in hand with the Communists that caused my downfall. The bankers broke me, and the Communists circulated lying rumors about my bank in Doc Slack's barber shop. I was the victim of an un-American conspiracy.At his nationalist rallies, Whipple evokes Pitkin's story to stoke popular fear and animosity toward immigrants, intellectuals, international capitalists, and political opponents.
With this conclusion, West suggests that belief in the Horatio Alger myth inevitably leads to a second myth that explains the failure of the first. The second myth, the Lemuel Pitkin myth, reinforces in the minds of the struggling, embittered white population the idea that they have been cheated out of the American dream by un-American and international forces. The two myths inform a reactionary movement of hostility, fear, and dangerous nationalism.
Note: Can a perception of the past serve as a vision for the future?
