"Love is the fog which burns with the first light of reality"
The film traces his unhappy childhood with a bullying father through his psychiatric exemption during World War II to odd jobbing across the country throughout the 1940s. Finally settling in L.A. he worked many detested years at the post office while trying to become a writer. But due to his gutter-realist style he got many rejection letters. During this time he was soaking up the "experience" that would dominate his books to come: Epic alcohol benders, barroom fisticuffs, screaming fights with a series of trashy here-today, gone-tomorrow girlfriends.