What is the importance of Hollywood as noted in the nonfiction book, The White Album?

Hollywood as a location exists in the "The White Album" in a number of essays; most predominantly in the essay 'On Hollywood' but also in a number of other essays as a place that occupies the American imagination.

Hollywood is presented as a bizarre place, a subculture which has its own conventions, rules and cultural conditions. During her time staying there working on a film script, Didion also takes the opportunity to study the neighborhood town of Hollywood and finds it strange in comparison to most of the rest of 'Middle America.' As a fantastical location, Hollywood also emerges as a place inside the American (and the world's imagination) as a place where the American Dream can most become manifest; where dreams can come true and ones' inner talent can reward oneself with Celebrity. What Didion actually finds is that these neighborhood of the imagination is also run, as with everywhere else in the world, according to in-crowds and elite social circles who regulate, 'edit' and review these dreams.