This book places a naive, childlike character into the world to act as a focus for a satirical critique of society. In that sense, it's like other books of the same period - Dr Strangelove by Peter George or The Magic Christian by Terry Southern. All three books, of course, have been made into films starring Peter Sellars.
It's essentially a simple gag: turn him loose and let a series of minor misunderstandings build into a shared narrative that is soon so accepted that the whole world shifts around it. It's pretty funny and short enough that it doesn't get boring. Even so, if I'd been the editor I'd have maybe suggested that it didn't need two fairly similar sex scenes, one after the other. I think we got the point the first time.
It holds up pretty well: the political and media landscape aren't the same now, but we still see the same kind of things going on: spin applied to out of context quotes, political brands being built up on the basis of very little real substance... Yeah, it still works in the twenty first century, in spite of everything.