The Reporter & the Screenwriter Essay examples -- Analysis, Nathanael

The late Steve Jobs in his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University eloquently traced the imprint of a penmanship class he had taken at Reed College years before to the creation of todays worldwide standard in computer typography. view architect Frank Gehry can trace the imprint of his college job working in a museum to his current success, and moreover can trace the imprint of a different piece of art to each one of the buildings he has created. President Bill Clinton can trace the imprint of witnessing Martin Luther King, Jr.s 1963 I brace a Dream speech to his decision to devote his flavor to politics. However, in regards to the novelist and tracing the imprint of their work, it appears the dominate voice echoing through the pages of their novel is life association. Two such novels that trace their imprint from life experience are Sister Carrie by former newspaper reporter Theodore Dreiser, and The Day of the Locust by screenwriter Nathanael West. In obvious ways Sis ter Carrie shares its subject matter with the newspaper. As it is well-known, the model for Sister Carries main character is Dreisers child Emma, who fled from Chicago to New York with her married lover after he stole money from the saloon where he worked. Dreiser based the character of Sister Carrie on family experience, provided the novels origins are journalistic as well as personal. The entire New York City section of Sister Carrie, with its dual emphasis on the glamorous world of the theatre and the miserable existence of the tramp, mirrors actual newspaper stories of both Broadway and the Bowery. Men similar to Hurstwood in his downward spiral could be well found in the newspaper. Dreiser may have written an article about a trap who, like ... ...dull, heavy labor, West writes of the transplanted Midwesterner, Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that theyve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and we nt to the movies. Both fed them on lynching, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars They have been cheated and betrayed (West 177-178). The riot at the gala premiere at the end of the novel is their revenge on the false promises of movies.Two very different stories written by men who let their life experience trace an imprint through the pages of their novels. Theodore Dreiser with the traces of the who, what, where, when and why of the newspaper reporter and Nathanael West with the traces of montage and dialogue of the screenwriter - both leaving their unending imprint as novelists.