After defecting from Poland Jerzy Kosinski gets to work trying to make a name for himself in the States. He starts telling some incredibly tall tales about his childhood during the war and somehow manages to publish a few non-fiction books in English despite the fact that his grasp on the language is tentative, at best. In order to write his great book, Mailer sails across the Pacific to fight in World War 2. Well, he does a bit of fighting; mostly he makes pork and beans. But eventually he gathers enough material to sit down and write what he believes will be the war’s great novel, The Naked and the Dead. Whether or not he succeeds is up for debate, but he is definitely successful in teaching the world the word “fug.”