“If New York is the City That Never Sleeps, then Los Angeles is the City That’s Always Passed Out on the Couch.”
After race, celebrity culture is a major target of Beatty's criticism in the novel. There's the obvious example of Hominy and The Little Rascals footage, and the setting of Los Angeles, the pinnacle of celebrity culture in America. In what other ways does Beatty lampoon the "cult" of celebrity, and in what ways does he use that to comment on his larger themes?