The Magic Christian
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...
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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.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780802134653 (0802134653)
Publish date: June 11th 1996
Publisher: Grove Press
Pages no: 160
Edition language: English
Guy Grand--"Grand" Guy Grand--is a billionaire, and the dubious protagonist of The Magic Christian, Terry Southern's satire of American culture. Grand Guy is a master of the elaborate, all-out, over-the-top practical joke, a mean-spirited prankster who believes that everyone has his price and who i...
Terry Southern is an American novelist, Academy-award nominated screenwriter, and even later did writing for Saturday Night Live. He is praised for his satire and humor, and "The Magic Christian" has no shortage of luminaries singing its praises.Not this reviewer. The novel revolves around Guy Grand...
Interesting in the beginning, but sort of fizzled out for me in the end.
I didn't find most of Guy's pranks that funny.
The Magic Christian is a blatantly dark, absurd, and unrelenting satire about a capitalistic society's relationship to money. Criticism is aimed at those who have wealth and those who seek it. In principle, I'm in agreement that actions spurred by money can be insane, inhumane--undignified, at best....