It was a kind of dark humor that was typical of the upcoming writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Bruce Jay Friedman and, on a more sophisticated level, Vladimir Nabokov, who was a big influence.I assume everyone here knows that Fagen and Becker took the name not from any of these authors but from Burroughs. And Veruca Salt took theirs from Roald Dahl. But if you did want to use a VN allusion, what name would you give your rock group?