Nathanael West

Nathanael West (born Nathanael von Wallenstein) was an American author, screenwriter and satirist. After graduating from Brown University he spent most of the rest of his life in California writing screenplays. The screenplays supported him enough to allow him to write fiction (for which he'd become famous after his death) in his spare time, but were otherwise generally unprofitable. He was killed in a car accident in El Centro, California.