It wouldn't have to be terribly close to align as one con-job sold to flattered up kids is the same as another, but the courses taken by Alan Mendelsohn and Leonard Neeble are in part parodies of Sciengology. 
More curiously, the literary eccentric Joe Gould makes an appearance of sorts -- in the form of a character who's writing up everything everyone says -- pausing to lunch with Mendelshon and Neeble -- writing up a transcript of lived oral history.  A couple years ago, Jill Lepore wrote a book trying to follow the path of Joe Gould, and (only a spoiler if you were reading it as a novel) -- she decides it's not worth it and gets bored with Joe Gould, and any interest in the oh so eccentric Gould obscures a more worthy forgotten Harlem Renaissance artist named Augusta Savage.
Somehow seems part and partial to the themes...