“Isn’t it pretty to think so”

“Isn’t it pretty to think so?” is a recurring expression whose meaning shifts from a bleak question about the American Dream to a wry line in a library conversation. Its return connects the book’s broad argument about illusion with Sara Goldfarb’s concrete hopes of appearing on television and losing weight.

Authorial Framing

In the prefatory statement, Hubert Selby, Jr. attributes the line to Hemingway while considering whether there will ever be a requiem for the Dream. Selby doubts that such mourning will come in time: the Dream may destroy people before they can recognize its passing. The quoted question leaves a small opening for hope, but its placement after that warning makes the hope sound fragile and perhaps self-deceiving.

That uncertainty echoes Selby’s account of four individuals pursuing the American Dream without distinguishing the vision in their hearts from the illusion they pursue. Their pursuit leaves them unable to experience their original vision, and, as Selby puts it, everything of value is lost. In this context, the expression is not simply a consoling reassurance; it asks whether an appealing belief can survive contact with its consequences.

The Library Echo

The line returns when Sara Goldfarb visits the library for diet books. Before arriving, she has bought a danish and eats it slowly on the way, even as she prepares to seek a way to lose weight for her anticipated television appearance. She tells the librarian that she wants to look svelte. The librarian chuckles and echoes the expression before turning to help her find a suitable book.

The exchange gives the phrase a lighter, more intimate setting than its appearance in Selby’s prefatory reflection. Here it is folded into friendly conversation, not delivered as a formal judgment. Yet the moment retains an irony: Sara’s stated plan to slim down sits beside the danish she has just eaten, and the librarian’s amused response briefly registers the gap between intention and action without ending the conversation or refusing her help.

Repetition and Meaning

Across these two contexts, the expression changes scale but keeps its tension between desire and doubt. In the prefatory statement, it follows a bleak reflection on the fate of the American Dream; in the library, it meets Sara’s confidence about her television prospects and weight-loss plans. The recurrence makes her ordinary exchange resonate with the book’s wider concern: hopeful visions can be difficult to distinguish from comforting illusions.

The line does not erase the difference between Selby’s grave warning and the librarian’s gentle humor. Instead, its return lets both meanings coexist. What sounds like a skeptical afterthought in the foreword becomes an understated comic echo in Sara’s encounter, linking her personal aspiration to the book’s larger question about what people choose to believe.