173:. Pitkin is a typical ‘Schlemiel’, stumbling from one situation to the next; he gets robbed, cheated, unjustly arrested, frequently beaten and exploited. In a parallel plot, Betty Prail, Pitkin's love interest, is raped, abused, and sold into prostitution. Over the course of the novel Pitkin manages to lose an eye, his teeth, his thumb, his scalp and his leg, but nevertheless retains his optimism and gullibility to the inevitably bitter end.
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rejected the novel, West continued to work on it until it was finally accepted by Covici-Friede in March 1934. The novel was published in New York City in an edition of 3,000 copies to mixed reviews and poor sales; it was not reprinted in West's lifetime. The novel later appeared in several reprints
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as their title, though the story had nothing to do with the novel, hoping that a studio would pay more for a story allegedly based on a published book. West was certain that no one would actually read the book to check whether the screen story had any relation to the novel. On
September 24, 1940
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Pitkin's troubles, however, don't end with his death. Even after his death, he is exploited as a martyr by the ‘National
Revolutionary Party’, a political organization led by Shagpoke Whipple, a manipulative former American president. Pitkin's birthday becomes a
214:, West presents Italian slavers, Chinese pimps, brutal Irish cops, and greedy Jewish lawyers. Though most of the early criticism dismissed the novel as too direct a parody to have any real literary merit, it is seen by some as an early example of
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Pitkin's pathetic inability to conform to society's standards, or to the ‘American’ way of life, is the main cause of his repeated failures. Nevertheless, there is something admirable in Pitkin's naïve persistence, as West wrote in a letter to
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Suppose he had the
Horatio Alger slant and was a guy who was trying to get one foot on the ladder of success and they were always moving the ladder on him, but they couldn’t touch the dream.
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West not only parodies Alger by mimicking his prose style, he also lifted several passages directly from a number of different Alger novels. In
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starting from 1940, following West's renewed fame, and was collected in a single volume edition of the complete novels, as well as in the
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was never filmed. The text of the screen story appears in the
Library of America's edition of West's work.
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In
September 1940 West wrote an original screen story in collaboration with Boris Ingster. They used
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in his list of canonical works of the period he names the
Chaotic Age (1900–present) in
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in the fall of 1933. A handwritten first draft was completed in
November. Though
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bought the story for $ 10,000 and assigned it to screenwriter
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299:West, Nathanael. Novels & Other Writings. Ed.
121:A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin
376:. New York: The Library of America, 1997. 814.
303:. New York: The Library of America, 1997. 238.
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346:New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1994. 532.
325:Scharnhorst, Gary. "From Rags To Patches, or
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653:Films with screenplays by Nathanael West
359:. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 22-23.
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151:of success, the novel is evocative of
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161:, which satirized the philosophical
314:Nathanael West: The Art of His Life
255:edition of West's collected works.
193:Literary significance and criticism
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92:Print (hardback & paperback)
316:. New York: Hayden, 1971. xxi.
331:Ball State University Forum 21
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433:The Dream Life of Balso Snell
355:Bloom, Harold. Introduction.
132:'s novels and their eternal
16:1934 novel by Nathanael West
592:Stranger on the Third Floor
370:Novels & Other Writings
357:American fiction, 1914-1945
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638:American satirical novels
167:Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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648:Novels by Nathanael West
536:The President's Mystery
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550:It Could Happen to You
262:– a screen story
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628:1934 American novels
571:The Spirit of Culver
543:Rhythm in the Clouds
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599:Men Against the Sky
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522:Ticket to Paradise
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185:and International
149:Horatio Alger myth
31:1961 reprint cover
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585:I Stole a Million
564:Gangs of New York
529:Follow Your Heart
479:Western Union Boy
440:Miss Lonelyhearts
374:Sacvan Bercovitch
368:West, Nathanael.
344:The Western Canon
329:As Alter-Alger."
301:Sacvan Bercovitch
273:Columbia Pictures
228:The Western Canon
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187:Capitalism
222:includes
69:Published
663:Optimism
163:optimism
153:Voltaire
134:optimism
47:Language
183:Marxism
158:Candide
50:English
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372:. Ed.
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100:229 pp
72:1934 (
59:Parody
37:Author
489:Plays
414:Works
97:Pages
63:Farce
55:Genre
169:and
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