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A review by blackoxford
A Cool Million by Nathanael West
3.0
America as Farce
In the 1930’s America still considered itself a young country with much to learn. By all appearances almost a century later the country has matured into itself, becoming more of what it already was. Unfortunately it hasn’t learned much at all.
Rubes, sharp businessmen, and thieves (as well as the odd paedophile or two) - these are the demographic categories in West’s farce of American life. These groups are governed by a combination of corrupt officials, brutal police, and a justice system dominated by stupidity.
All the great myths of America as the land of opportunity are trailed out sarcastically in A Cool Million. Henry Ford and John Rockefeller represent ideals toward which to strive. The threats that exist - particularly to female virtue - are the fault of foreign immigrants and black folk.
An ex-President is serving time for fraud (thus raising hopeful thoughts in the present day). But as he says “Here a man is a millionaire one day and a pauper the next, but no one thinks the worse of him.” He’ll be back in business and running for political office again in no time. It’s a great country. “Despite the Communists and their vile propaganda against individualism, this is still the golden land of opportunity.”
West’s protagonist is Lem, a Bernie Sanders prototype from Vermont, who is beaten down by the fraud prone ex-President, Shagpoke Whipple (the name has appropriate connotations in Britain), a remarkable Trump look-a-like, and by the primitive libertarianism of the American social system.
Among other indignities, Lem is subject to the malicious, Make-America-Great-Again nostalgia that has always been rife in the country. Lem’s antique family home in Vermont is foreclosed, dismantled and re-erected in the shop window of a New York City interior decorator.
In America, politics is a business like any other and Shagpoke is undeterred by his recent incarceration. "The time for a new party with the old American principles was, I realized, overripe. I decided to form it; and so the National Revolutionary Party, popularly known as the ` Leather Shirts,' was born. The uniform of our 'Storm Troops' is a coonskin cap like the one I am wearing, a deerskin shirt and a pair of moccasins. Our weapon is the squirrel rifle." It sounds absurd but I think Trump actually read this. He may even claim to have written it.
Shagpoke certainly could have written the Trump commercial playbook. Political memorabilia is a money maker is it not? “Coonskin hats with extra long tails, deerskin shirts with or without fringes, blue jeans, moccasins, squirrel rifles, everything for the American Fascist at rock bottom prices. 30% off for Cash.”
The Deplorables flock to his side, undoubtedly backed by the NRA of the day (in 1934, the year of the book’s publication, the NRA first became politically involved in publicising gun legislation to its members). The slogans are perennial: "America for Americans! Back to the principles of Andy Jackson and Abe Lincoln!" Shagpoke adopts the Nixon strategy: “In the South, where he expected to get considerable support for his movement, they would not stand for Negroes.” He knows his Americans.
Lem cannot avoid being enmeshed in the system of fraud and deceit. Having lost all his teeth as well as an eye, he is not all that hot on the employment market. But that doesn’t prevent him from engaging in further adventures worthy of an old fashioned Saturday morning serial at the cinema.
In the 1930’s America still considered itself a young country with much to learn. By all appearances almost a century later the country has matured into itself, becoming more of what it already was. Unfortunately it hasn’t learned much at all.
Rubes, sharp businessmen, and thieves (as well as the odd paedophile or two) - these are the demographic categories in West’s farce of American life. These groups are governed by a combination of corrupt officials, brutal police, and a justice system dominated by stupidity.
All the great myths of America as the land of opportunity are trailed out sarcastically in A Cool Million. Henry Ford and John Rockefeller represent ideals toward which to strive. The threats that exist - particularly to female virtue - are the fault of foreign immigrants and black folk.
An ex-President is serving time for fraud (thus raising hopeful thoughts in the present day). But as he says “Here a man is a millionaire one day and a pauper the next, but no one thinks the worse of him.” He’ll be back in business and running for political office again in no time. It’s a great country. “Despite the Communists and their vile propaganda against individualism, this is still the golden land of opportunity.”
West’s protagonist is Lem, a Bernie Sanders prototype from Vermont, who is beaten down by the fraud prone ex-President, Shagpoke Whipple (the name has appropriate connotations in Britain), a remarkable Trump look-a-like, and by the primitive libertarianism of the American social system.
Among other indignities, Lem is subject to the malicious, Make-America-Great-Again nostalgia that has always been rife in the country. Lem’s antique family home in Vermont is foreclosed, dismantled and re-erected in the shop window of a New York City interior decorator.
In America, politics is a business like any other and Shagpoke is undeterred by his recent incarceration. "The time for a new party with the old American principles was, I realized, overripe. I decided to form it; and so the National Revolutionary Party, popularly known as the ` Leather Shirts,' was born. The uniform of our 'Storm Troops' is a coonskin cap like the one I am wearing, a deerskin shirt and a pair of moccasins. Our weapon is the squirrel rifle." It sounds absurd but I think Trump actually read this. He may even claim to have written it.
Shagpoke certainly could have written the Trump commercial playbook. Political memorabilia is a money maker is it not? “Coonskin hats with extra long tails, deerskin shirts with or without fringes, blue jeans, moccasins, squirrel rifles, everything for the American Fascist at rock bottom prices. 30% off for Cash.”
The Deplorables flock to his side, undoubtedly backed by the NRA of the day (in 1934, the year of the book’s publication, the NRA first became politically involved in publicising gun legislation to its members). The slogans are perennial: "America for Americans! Back to the principles of Andy Jackson and Abe Lincoln!" Shagpoke adopts the Nixon strategy: “In the South, where he expected to get considerable support for his movement, they would not stand for Negroes.” He knows his Americans.
Lem cannot avoid being enmeshed in the system of fraud and deceit. Having lost all his teeth as well as an eye, he is not all that hot on the employment market. But that doesn’t prevent him from engaging in further adventures worthy of an old fashioned Saturday morning serial at the cinema.