One of the book's jokes is that, whenever anyone uses a metaphor, Victor invariably fails to understand it. He is impervious to irony, as to any hint of ambiguity or depth. There is something seductive in such stupidity. There is something exhilarating about so rapt an embrace of looks and surfaces. The world is transfigured, as if everything in it had been designed by Prada.
Every object glows with an icy sheen.
Every person Victor meets is too cool for words. Like the models in a Prada ad, they are all rich, white, haughty, distant, and blas about everything. It's just like being in a movie. And indeed, as the book proceeds, Victor finds it harder and harder to tell his life apart from the movies. Film crews seem to follow him everywhere.