As the novelist of
Flash and Filigree
and
The Magic Christian
and cowriter of
Dr. Strangelove
Easy Rider
, Terry Southern helped define the sixties. Now, sixty years later, his dark humor and biting satire of American society and all its corruption, sex, money, status, power, and stardom, takes on new relevance.
When Dwight Garner reviewed the anniversary edition of Southern’s
Candy
in the
New York Times
he pointed to its significance in today’s political climate, stating that “
works in the era of #MeToo in part because it so coyly subverts the male gaze. The men who leer after Candy are truly fatuous primates, fit for little but gibbering at the moon.” In this 60th anniversary edition of
, we have another searing Southern comic novel—this one a story of a mayhem-making billionaire, and a reminder of just how entrenched American greed and corruption is in our history.
Sir Guy Grand is determined to create disorder in the material world and willing to spare no expense to do it. His ultimate goal is to prove his theory that there is nothing so degrading or so distasteful that someone won’t do for money. A satire of America’s obsession with bigness, toughness, TV, guns, and money,
is a hilarious and wickedly original novel from a true comic genius.