Nathanael West (1903-1940) published four novels - The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931) Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) A Cool Million (1934) The Day of the Locust (1939). West said that 'an artist can afford to be anything but dull'. He died almost unknown in a car crash at the age of thirty-seven. His fans include W.H. Auden, Matt Groening (there is a bookkeeper character in West's 1939 novel The Day Of The Locust called Homer Simpson), F Scott Fitzgerald and Johnny Depp.
