It is unclear whether this ever actually happened, but West later re-imagined this in his short story "Western Union Boy". As Jewish students were not allowed to join most fraternities, his main friend was his future brother-in-law S. J. Perelman. (Perelman married West's sister Laura.) West barely finished at Brown with a degree. He then went to Paris for three months, and it was at this point that he changed his name to Nathanael West. His family, who had supported him thus far, ran into financial difficulties in the late 1920s. West returned home and worked sporadically in construction for his father, eventually finding a job as the night manager of the Hotel Kenmore Hall on East 23rd Street in Manhattan. One of West's real-life experiences at the hotel inspired the incident between Romola Martin and Homer Simpson that would later appear in "The Day of the Locust" (1939).