Hollywood is easily the worst of the 'Chinaski' novels. It's based on Bukowski's experience writing the screenplay for the film Barfly (staring Mickey Rourke), and while it's full of very thinly disguised celebrity portraits (in many cases, take-downs), Chinaski has by this stage lost much of his fire. He's successful and well, boring - and even though of course, things frequently spiral out of control, it's just not the same. And many of the celebrity pseudonyms are juvenile and the pen portraits are such obvious caricatures, they don't ring true in the way that the parade of grotesques in his earlier novels did. You end up just not caring.