Amis talking to his readers

[Otto]

I've never got to read "Money" despite the fact that I loved this
short excerpt which I've read in David Lodge's "The Art of Fiction"
(Penguin 1992, Chapter 12, 'The Sense of Place', p. 56):

"So what can a poor boy do? You come out of the hotel, the Vraimont.
Over boiling Watts the downtown skyline carries a smear of God's green
snot. You walk left, you walk right, you are a bank rat on a busy
river. This restaurant serves no drink, this one serves no meat, this
one serves no heterosexuals. You can your chimp shampooed, you can get
your dick tattooed, twenty-four hour, but can you get lunch? And
should you see a sign on the far side of the street flashing BEEF -
BOOZE - NO STRINGS, then you can forget it. The only way to get across
the road is to be born there. All the ped-xing signs say DON'T WALK,
all of them, all the time. That is the message, the content of Los
Angeles: don't walk. Stay inside. Don't walk. Drive. Don't Walk. Run!
I tried the cabs. No use. The cabbies are all Saturnians who aren't
even sure whether this is a right planet or a left planet. The first
thing you have to do, every trip, is teach them how to drive."