One million even

Published in 1934, it is perhaps Nathanael West's cruelest novel. Lemuel Pitkin, a naive young man, sets out in search of success and ends up crushed by the social and economic machinery of the United States.

At first glance, it seems like a parody of fairy tales about the triumph of the simple man; in reality, it is a ruthless demolition of the rhetoric of the "American dream".

The more I read, the more I wonder if it ever actually existed.

West does not use compassion to explain a society that feeds on the naivety and misery of the most vulnerable. The novel's black humor is uncomfortable because it works like a mirror: it shows us that success, in this logic, only exists at the expense of crushing the "other".

Sound familiar? We are always going around the same problems, right?

Nathanael West (1903–1940) was an American writer and screenwriter whose brief, yet intense, work became a reference for the satirical and disillusioned literature of the 20th century. Author of only four novels, including Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, he built a corrosive vision of American society, exposing the cruelty of success and the fragility of those who live on illusions.

To survive, he wrote screenplays in Hollywood between 1936 and 1940, in an industry he himself despised, but which paid the bills. Before that, he had managed hotels in New York, where he even offered rooms for free to writers he liked, just to enjoy their company. A strategy that was not very profitable, but literarily convenient.

West dedicated himself to parodying Western civilization with a poisoned humor and touches of surrealism, shaped by the misery and despair of the Great Depression. He gave "words" to human degradation, helplessness, and loneliness, creating characters so tragic that they almost become comical. Or is it the other way around?

His life ended abruptly on December 22, 1940, in a car accident. Beside him died his new wife, Eileen McKenny, whose life had inspired the popular play My Sister Eileen. Until his end, he had the bitter taste of tragedy.

Although Nathanael West's fiction received some isolated praise from critics, the public completely ignored him. Supreme irony: after his death, academics and writers began to venerate him as one of the great satirists of the 20th century.

He left a short body of work. It continues to echo, because of the timeliness of its disillusionment.