Flash and Filigree: A Novel

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.”