A Cool Million
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A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin is Nathanael West's third novel, published in 1934. It is a brutal satire of Horatio Alger's novels and their eternal optimism.
1961 reprint cover
Optimism
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Optimism is the attitude or mindset of expecting events to lead to particularly positive, favorable, desirable, and hopeful outcomes. A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a g
A Cool Million
…The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin is Nathanael West's third novel, published in 1934. It is a brutal satire of Horatio Alger's novels and their eternal optimism. A Cool Million, as its subtitle suggests, presents "the dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin," piece by piece. As a satire of the Horatio Alger myth of success…
Half a glass of water, illustration of two different mental attitudes, optimism (half full) and pessimism (half empty)
An optimist and a pessimist, Vladimir Makovsky, 1893