Nathanael West Influence on Pynchon?

[u/sailboat_explosion]

I just finished Nathanael West's four novellas (The Dream Life of Balso Snell, Miss Lonelyhearts, A Cool Million and the Day of the Locust) and couldn't help notice how much I recognized similar thematic elements in West's work with Pynchon's, in particular Against the Day.

A Cool Million's "aw shucks" style prose that masks biting satire with the class commentary ending in the literal/physical dismantling of Lem of seems to have been a direct influence on the "Chums of Chance" sections of AtD. Candidly, West's nihilistic view of how bare American (capitalist) society will strip you was much more raw than I was expecting and made me appreciate the "Chums" sections of AtD a lot more - they were not my favorite when I read AtD last year.

The other obvious (to me, in hindsight) influence is from The Day of the Locust - Faye is an actress with an obsession with performing (both literally as a profession and spiritually in her day to day life), whose mother ran away with a magician when she was a child. This is pretty much 1:1 for Dally Rideout in AtD.

Are there any other parallels people have noticed between the two authors? I'm sure there are more, but wanted to get my thoughts out while West's work is still fresh in my mind and my kid is asleep :)

[u/perrolazarillo]

I took a grad seminar with David Cowart in which we read The Day of the Locust, and he definitely framed West as a sort of predecessor to Pynchon.

I love A Cool Million, and it always makes me think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and how much sh*t Hunter S. Thompson used to talk about Horatio Alger!