About The Book

Terry Southern was an acclaimed satirist of American culture, the writer who dreamed-up Candy and coauthored the screenplays for Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider. In Flash and Filigree, lauded as “a dazzling performance” by Henry Green, Southern delivers an outrageously funny commentary on the darker side of suburban L.A.

Frederick Eichner, a world-renowned dermatologist, is visited by the entrancingly irritating Mr. Felix Treevly, who comes to him as a patient and stays as an obsession. Mr. Treevly leads the doctor into a series of increasingly chaotic situations full of hilariously weird characters: a drive-in theater seduction, a hashish party, a car crash, a drunken private detective, and the infamous What’s My Disease? quiz-show. This whirlwind of a novel is an enigmatic work of comic genius from the man B. J. Novak calls “the coolest figure of twentieth century literature.”

Praise for Flash and Filigree

“Flash and Filigree has an unfailing sense of the ridiculous, heightened by deadpan delivery.”—Time

“In this world, nothing is true, and censure or outrage is simply irrelevant.”—William S. Burroughs

“The airless, slightly torpid climate of suburban Los Angeles, and the speech of its natives, is rendered with arresting vividness. Equally compelling are the reactions of his bizarre protagonists.”—New York Times

“A coolly mad book written in dancing prose, Flash and Filigree is startlingly original.”—Detroit Sunday Times

“[Southern] deserves a statue.”—Larry McMurtry