Preview of What Makes Sammy Run? Summary:

Schulberg grew up in a Hollywood which seemed to focus its spotlight more often than not on superficially defined success. Since the subject matter for his writing is often drawn from that world, his first and immediately acclaimed novel is an examination of success in terms of his hometown.

However, because Hollywood is symbolically the twentieth-century American locus of glittering success (perhaps the locus for the entire world), What Makes Sammy Run? tells a modern success story and remains an important expose of a century's definition of success. In What Makes Sammy Run?

Schulberg both reflects and anticipates an America — indeed a world — that is easily mesmerized by the influence of advertising and that can be manipulated through marketing and public relations.

The narrator of Schulberg's novel implicitly questions how one recognizes success (and failure for that matter), how one deals with individuals who covet success...