A cool Million - Nathaneal West

Read for the first time in October 2012.

Nathaneal West is in my opinion one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century based on the strength of “Dear Miss Lonelyhearts” and “The Day of the Locust.” “A Cool Million” is a lesser work. A sometimes clever and occasionally funny satire, it is of its time. It’s part “Candide” spoof and part Horatio Alger spoof that works to indict the American dream. It retains some resonance today, particularly in these times of economic woe, but the humor and the politics are unfortunately dated. The phrase, “International Jewish Bankers,” for example, is funny only for its quaintness as an opinion to ridicule. That paranoia has been replaced by different paranoias.

But how good might this have been in its own day? Probably not as good as Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbitt,” but nonetheless certainly darker. This is filled with straight up black comedy that makes Sinclair Lewis’s anti-Americanisms seem downright wholesome. Rape, forced prostitution, racism and mutilation are played for jokes here. And that might be something I would frown upon in a different context, but here ambition and reputation meet the method of ironic distance in an equilibrium that does not trouble me.

There’s one very good line where the main character’s mentor tells him “My boy, I believe I once told you that you had an almost certain chance to succeed because you were born poor and on a farm. Let me now tell you that your chance is even better because you have been to prison.” Another is the exchange where the main character expresses his innocence to a crime and the prosecutor responds “So was Christ and they nailed him.” Those were probably the two memorable laugh out loud moments for me.

All in all, this is an entertaining novella, if a bit slight, but nonetheless indicative of the potential West would later reveal. The darkness of some of the content is probably the most notable thing about it though.