Money, by Martin Amis, published in 1984, tells the story of John Self, a London advertising man, brought up partly in America, partly in a London pub called the Shakespeare. He’s a monstrous consumer of junk food, cigarettes, alcohol and pornography. His ad campaigns sell the virtues of products like the Rumpburger. John Self is a tough, nasty bloke who throws his weight and his money around. John, however, has one weakness. There is something in him that wants a finer, better life. This leaves him vulnerable to those who would exploit people who think there is a finer, better life to be had.

John has a fancy that his experience of growing up in the Shakespeare would make a good film. A New York film producer apparently believes in this dream. John Self is now as vulnerable as a young writer seeing an ad for a vanity publisher promising bestsellerdom for a fee.

John’s tough and diffident search for a better life is extremely funny. I tried to suppress the laughter because, firstly, I was laughing so often, I thought this might be unsettling for anyone close by. Secondly, a lot of the stuff making me laugh wasn’t actually a laughing matter. So I spent most of my time reading Money in a state of painful suppression, which risked triggering an asthma attack, or maybe causing damage to sinuses, or the inner ear.

When I wasn’t trying to stifle laughter, I was also enjoying the book on a thoughtful level, For all its downmarket strut and swagger, Money is an interesting reflection on the nature of culture. There’s energy in the low brow culture that John goes in for. This is lacking in the high arts to which his posh New York girlfriend, Martina, tries to introduce him. But even as John makes his effort at self improvement, we begin to feel that maybe the gulf he is trying to cross isn’t so wide. John grew up in the Shakespeare. If any cultural icon serves to remind us that high brow often starts out low brow, it is Shakespeare.

Martina has a German shepherd dog called Shadow, who she rescued from the streets. Shadow loves his cosy apartment, soft dog bed and kindly lady owner. But taking him for a walk is a risk, because this conflicted animal still wants to run back to his old haunts. John, during his time with Martina, is in exactly the same position. Even though he enjoys his comfortable life, visiting art galleries and opera houses, a crazy hankering for his former existence remains. This opposition makes the book. It is a cultural artefact that combines low and high, leaving me exhausted, a bit wheezy and morally perturbed in the ambivalent, in-between place where the best art has a chance of being made