The injuries and indignities suffered by Lemuel Pitkin are catalogued in just about every description of this book that you're likely to come across. Unfortunately, there's not much else to the novel: the hero is duped time and again, and the occasional bits of social commentary ("90 dollars? that's not enough to prove your innocence") provide some amusement, they are few and far between.

Well, I wasn't a big fan of Candide either. The "naive rustic at the mercy of a complex and uncaring society" isn't a scenario that holds up for more than about fifty pages. ( )

Another rather bleak book from Nathanael West, who this time offers a satire of optimism, and rejection of the rosy American dream novels epitomized by those from Horatio Alger. What was fascinating to me was his description of the conditions that lead to the rise of populism, reactionary, and fascist sentiment in America in the 1930’s. As Henry Claridge summarizes it so well in the introduction:

“Liberal opinion (which encompassed most of the better known writers of the period) had become increasingly worried about the rise of a kind of working-class and lower-middle-class insurgency that could readily be adapted to an indigenous version of the nationalisms to be seen in Europe, especially the Italy of Benito Mussolini, and the Far East. Americans, particularly those of Anglo-Saxon and German backgrounds with strong traditions of Bible reading and Protestant piety, felt increasingly insecure in the age of moral laxity that came with the end of the First World War, now compounded by the economic uncertainty brought on by the Great Depression. They felt threatened by organized labor in the form of trade unions, by business, especially the banks, and by government itself, now made more palpable for them in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. Among conservative intellectuals this degree of economic and political discontent stimulated the possibilities of new party-political alignments, and groups identifying themselves as ‘Revolutionary Conservatives’ or ‘Radicals of the Right’ emerged.”

Sound familiar? Unfortunately mixed up into this clarion call of alarm are a host of other worries: the fear of Chinese pimps forcing white women into prostitution, Jewish capitalism and global power, communist agents in America, and “inferior races greatly desiring the women of their superiors; this is why Negroes rape so many white women in our southern states.” Whew. This may put you off the book on its own, and I wouldn’t blame you. It’s a smorgasbord of the popular feelings, biases, and outright racism of the 1930’s all rolled into one, a portion of which is meant to show how ridiculous these views are, another part seeming to support them, and the line fairly blurry all the while.

As the hero of the story, Lemuel Pitkin careens from one adventure to the next, losing body parts along the way, we see the absurdity in the tale, but also West’s statement that optimism itself is absurd, for so many are similarly beaten down by the world. Man is consistent only in his cruelty to his fellow man, and as in ‘Miss Lonelyhearts’, the novel is graphic especially for the period. The satire of optimism may remind you of Voltaire’s ‘Candide’, but there is a raw, unpolished feel to this work. In some sense that gives it a degree of honesty, but in another, that West was making the story up as he went along, and artistically could have done a little better. I have to say, it was interesting to me though. ( )

A modern day version of Voltaire's classic "Candide." Easy reading, concise and very humorous- social commentary at its most entertaining. ( )

While I've read the other novellas of Nathaniel West, this one was an experience. Though West pre-dated him by thirty years, this one feels for all the world like something from Kurt Vonnegut's pen. ( )

1934. Lemuel Pitkin goes forth to New York City to make his fortune with the optimistic faith in the American dream of a Horatio Alger hero. He is cheated and beaten and robbed and jailed and gradually dismembered and then sold back to the public after his death as the martyr of a politcal party. Nathanael West does not believe in the American dream. Troubling Jewish stereotypes, despite West's being Jewish himself, and what seems to be the usual racism of the time period. This is supposed to be a cultural critique, but it's hard to say where the critique leaves off and the author's actual views creep in. ( )