Illusions

The theme of illusions forms the basis for much of what happens in the novel. West includes unreal and illusory images throughout the novel to indicate that what keeps Hollywood functioning are fantasies and dreams. Like the movie sets Tod designs and often has to walk through when he is at the studio, life in Hollywood in the 1930s is one-dimensional and flimsy.

Nothing seems to be indigenous in Hollywood; like most of the people living in Hollywood and the architecture of the buildings they inhabit, almost everything has been borrowed or brought from another place. The houses have been designed to look like Irish cottages, Spanish villas, or southern plantations. The characters often imagine themselves as someone different than they are really; for example, Claude Estee walks and talks as if he is a potbellied Confederate general, even though he is a "dried up little man with...