The late Steve Jobs, in his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University, eloquently traced the imprint of a calligraphy class he took at Reed College years before until the creation of today's global standard in computer typography. . Esteemed architect Frank Gehry can trace the imprint of his academic work in a museum to his current success, and can further trace the imprint of a different work of art on each of the buildings he created . President Bill Clinton can trace the imprint of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 speech, "I Have a Dream," to his decision to devote his life to politics. However, when it comes to the novelist and tracing the imprint of his work, it seems that the dominant voice that resonates through the pages of his novel is life experience. Two such novels that draw their imprint from life experience are Sister Carrie by former journalist Theodore Dreiser and The Day of the Locust by screenwriter Nathanael West. Obviously, Sister Carrie shares her subject with the newspaper. As is known, the model for the main character of Sister Carrie is Emma, ​​Dreiser's sister, who fled Chicago for New York with her married lover after stealing money from the saloon where he worked. Dreiser based the character of Sister Carrie on family experience, but the novel's origins are both journalistic and personal. The entire New York section of Sister Carrie, with its dual emphasis on the glamorous world of the theater and the miserable existence of the tramp, reflects the actual articles in the Broadway and Bowery newspapers. Men similar to Hurstwood in his downward spiral could be easily found in the newspaper. Dreiser may have written an article about a trap that, like... middle of paper... dull, drudgery work," West writes of the Midwestern transplant, "Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they have been deceived and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them lynchings, murders, sex crimes, explosions, destruction, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars… They were deceived and betrayed” (West 177-178). The riot at the preview gala at the end of the novel is their revenge on the false promises of cinema. Two very different stories written by men who let their life experiences leave their mark through the pages of their novels. Theodore Dreiser with the traces of the who, what, where, when and why of the journalist and Nathanael West with the traces of editing and dialogue of the screenwriter - both leaving their infinite imprint as novelists.