An American author, screenwriter, and satirist, he is particularly known for such novels as Miss Lonelyhearts and A Cool Million. His 1939 work, The Day of the Locust, is set in Great Depression-era Hollywood and was ranked by the Modern Library as one of the 100 Best English-Language Novels of the Twentieth Century. He was a poor student who earned admission to Tufts College only by producing false high school academic records. He later used another student's Tufts transcript to gain admission to Brown University.
