Magic Christian [Paperback]

Terry Southern (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 1997

This is the tale of Guy Grand, eccentric billionaire and the last of the big spenders. His ultimate goal is to prove his theory that there is nothing too degrading or too distasteful that someone won't do for money. In Grand's world, everyone has a price and he is all too willing to pay it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“I started reading The Magic Christian and I thought I was going to go insane . . . It was an incredible influence on me.” —Hunter S. Thompson

 

“[The Magic Christian] is at once the most profoundly satiric and wildly comic account of our life and times in years.” —Nelson Algren

 

“Terry Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation, and in The Magic Christian he surpasses Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet, a work similarly inspired by conventional wisdom’s serene idiocy.” —Gore Vidal

 

 “Terry Southern is the illegitimate son of Mack Sennet and Edna Saint Vincent Millay.” —Kurt Vonnegut

 

“Terry Southern was one of the first and best of the new wave of American writers, defining the cutting edge of black comedy.” —Joseph Heller

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

One of the funniest, cruelest, and most savagely revealing books about American life ever written, The Magic Christian has been called Terry Southern's masterpiece.

Guy Grand is an eccentric billionaire--the last of the big spenders--determined to create disorder in the material world and willing to spare no expense to do it. Leading a life full of practical jokes and madcap schemes, his ultimate goal is to prove his theory that there is nothing so degrading or so distasteful that someone won't do it for money. In Guy Grand's world, everyone has a price, and he is all too willing to pay it.

A satire of America's obsession with bigness, toughness, money, TV, guns, and sex, The Magic Christian is a hilarious and wickedly original novel from a true comic genius.

"This is at once the most profoundly satiric and wildly comic account of our life and times in years."--Nelson Algren, The Nation

"Terry Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation."--Gore Vidal

"Mr. Southern is wonderfully prodigal of comic ideas.... An enormously funny and satisfying satire, done with a great thrifty distinction."--The Spectator

"Terry Southern writes a mean, coolly deliberate, and murderous prose."--Norman Mailer

Terry Southern was the author of Flash and Filigree, Candy (with Mason Hoffenberg), Blue Movie, and Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes. He was also an Oscar-nominated screenwriter whose credits include Easy Rider, Dr. Strangelove, and Barbarella, as well as an adaptation of The Magic Christian. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 148 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Books (April 3, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074753098X
• ISBN-13: 978-0747530985
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,849,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The funniest book ever written, according to Peter Sellers., August 29, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Magic Christian (Terry Southern) (Paperback)

In literary history, "The Magic Christian" will be remembered as the book which got Terry Southern the job of writing "Dr Strangelove": it seems that Peter Sellers loved the book and sent out 100 copies to his friends, one of whom was the great Stanley Kubrick. The book, indeed, is a side-splitting satire, following one Guy Grand (a "grand guy"), a millionaire of uncertain origin, as he pays for exorbitant pranks with the sole purpose of "making it hot" for people. ("How much would it cost me to make you eat that ticket?" Grand asks an astonished traffic cop.) But the book is far from silly: like much of Southern's work, the comedy barely masks strong critiques of greed and elitism. It is a must-read for the aspiring satirist and would-be social critic.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic American Satire, February 27, 2001

By 

Sir Charles Panther "Life is hard. It's hard... (Alexandria, Virginny, USandA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Magic Christian (Terry Southern) (Paperback)

What would you do if you had the resources to buy anyone or anything you wished? Guy Grand acts immediately and directly on this premise, and the results are, on the surface hilarious. But it is Southern's quiet, subtle, and expertly woven satirical narrative and incisive comment on 1950s America amid the vignettes of money-fueled chaos that are the true gems, and the heart of this wonderful novel. The best example of this is the book's final lines, where Southern closes gently yet pointedly with a description of "the strange searching haste which can be seen in the faces, and especially the eyes, of (American) people in the (American) cities, every evening, just about the time now it starts really getting dark" (parenthesis added).

A comment of this book is not complete without a nod to the 1969 movie of the same name. Believing that most readers of this book will come to it by way of the film, I think there may be some disappointment. This is no massive epic (the novel is only 148 pages) that had to be pared down for screenplay treatment, so there's just not that much more to enjoy. Most of the sketches from the movie are directly out of the book, the only real change being the story's placement in late 1960s mod Britain, not 1950s Eisenhower-Middle America. This change of venue works very, very well for the film, with its English cast and contributors, including lead Peter Sellers, hippie Beatle Ringo Starr, Monty Python studs John Cleese and Graham Chapman, and ubiquitous party-boy Who drummer, Keith Moon as an addled nun. The only thing missing from the film is the novel's quiet satire.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Waiting forever ..., June 2, 2005

By 

landru141 (Planet Houston) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Magic Christian (Terry Southern) (Paperback)

I read this a long time ago in college. I've been waiting for it to come out in some form or another forever. Thank God for the Internet.

This book (really a novella) is not for everyone. If you are looking for a book about characters you can identify with, you are looking in the wrong place. Unless you have a wicked streak a mile long ... The Magic Christian is about one man's quest to find everyone's price. It is a mercilessly funny and mean novel about the modern age as has ever been written. The movie starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr was a decent, if slapstick adaptation. But, the spirit of the piece remained.

Money. What will you do for money? How low will you go for the dollar? For those who really appreciate the absurdities of modern culture, Terry Southern is the man to smack them on the head and put a sticker on them. Money. The root of all evil, because it separates mankind and forever gives one power over another. Those who would say this is liberal silliness are probably so corrupted by money themselves they can't see beyond it. They are the men encouraging us to swim in the vats of excrement for their own amusement. How low will we all go?

Taking on the establishment doesn't mean a lot these days, especially in the anti-baby boomer climate of the X and Y generation, but that doesn't mean this book won't appeal to anyone. The spirit of eternal outrage and insanity can be felt in these pages. Anarchy and the eternal optimism of humanity, intermingled in perversity.

Terry Southern was the principle writer of Dr. Strangelove when it became a comedy. It was because Peter Sellers loved this novel.