Charles Bukowski became famous for his semi-autobiographical writings about "lowlife America." Novels like Post Office and Factotum earned this whiskey poet both critical acclaim and financial stability, and eventually led to the making of the film Barfly with Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, which Bukowski scripted based on his life in 1950s Los Angeles. Though he had lived in the shadow of the famous sign for decades, it was his first real involvement with Hollywood, and this 1989 novel is a thinly veiled fictionalization of Bukowski's odyssey through the film industry, as his alter ego Henry Chinaski encounters all of its celebrity, absurdity, and egotism.