“The world was a race to Sammy. He was running against time. Sometimes I used to sit at the bar at Bleeck’s, stare at the reflection in my highball glass and say, ‘Al, I don’t give a goddam if you never move your ass off this seat again. If you never write another line. I default. If it’s a race, you can scratch my name right now. Al Manheim does not choose to run.’ And then it would start running through my head: What makes Sammy run? What makes Sammy run?”

This is the first instance of Al’s repeated question: What makes Sammy run? He struggles with his burgeoning fascination with Sammy, even as he acknowledges that his personality and values are in direct contrast to Sammy’s. Al serves as a foil to Sammy throughout the novel.

“That’s a little more like it, I thought. ‘I’d settle for half their talent myself,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean talent,’ Sammy said. ‘I mean profit. That show must be cleaning up.’”

Once again, the differences between Sammy and Al are made apparent, this time with regard to art. While Al’s thoughts immediately go to the artistic value of a play, Sammy rates a production by the profit it makes. This is a prelude to their motivations in Hollywood, where Al will be focused on the craft of movie making while Sammy will only care about profit.

“Even though superficially we were similar, both columnists, both Jewish, both men, both American citizens, both awake for the same brief moment in world time, I stared at Sammy now, asked my question and waited for the answer like a mystic trying to reach another world.”

Sammy is often alienated from community by his own self-centered actions. While Al is concerned about other people, their lives, and his own cultural identity, Sammy refuses any association that does not provide profit.