09/03/2026
A couple of pages from an early typescript draft of Nathanael West’s *A Cool Million* (1934), a savage dismantling of the Horatio Alger success story and a novel that speaks disconcertingly to us 92 years later.
Here Nathan “Shagpoke” Whipple, West’s homespun patriot turned fascist demagogue, still appears under the rather less subtle name **Nathan “Sh*tepoke” Whipple**.
Even better is a penciled dedication West apparently considered and abandoned:
“This book is dedicated to the glorious memory of Horatio Alger Jr., the Bullfinch of American Fable.”
In the published novel, Shagpoke promises jobs while directing the anger of the dispossessed toward Jewish bankers, labor unions and the “alien elements” supposedly corrupting America. His National Revolutionary Party—the **Leather Shirts**—eventually carries him to dictatorship.
West wrote it in 1934.
