Terry Southern has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The Magic Christian.
The Magic Christian
Summary
In this uproarious and wicked cult-classic, Southern skewers American greed and pomposity Guy Grand, an eccentric billionaire prankster, is rich enough to do whatever he likes. And what he likes is to carefully execute projects where he can cauterize by ridicule what the rest of the world ignores: Complacency, greed, corruption, and idiocy. Determined to "make it hot for people," Grand spends his billions staging a series of hilarious, sometimes bewildering stunts, lampooning along the way the American holy cows of money, status, power, beauty, media, and stardom. Concocting deliciously perverse mayhem, he throws a million one-hundred-dollar bills into an enormous vat of steaming offal, proving just what people will do for money, and he promotes a new silky shampoo that turns hair to wire and a deodorant that becomes a time-released stench-bomb. He inserts subliminally suggestive and perverse images into well-loved classic films, takes a howitzer on safari, and brings a panther to a kennel club dog show. His most elaborate adventure is an ultra-exclusive cruise aboard the S.S. Magic Christian, where elite passengers are treated to a series of madcap indignities. The Magic Christian is a hilarious and savagely satiric view of American commercialism, rich in Southern's deft handling of detail, dialogue, and delightful deviancy.
©1959, 1960 Terry Southern (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Flash and Filigree
Summary
A satirical dream-logic journey through the dark heart of 1950s Los Angeles Dr. Frederick Eichner, world-renowned dermatologist, is visited by the entrancingly irritating Felix Treevly who comes to him as a patient and stays as an obsession. Prosaic incidents blossom into bizarre developments with the sharpened reality of dreams as the spectral Mr. Treevly leads the doctor into a series of increasingly weird situations. With the assistance of a drunken private detective, a mad judge, a car crash, a game show called What’s My Disease, and a hashish party, Treevly drives Eichner to madness and mayhem. It is through comedy and a strange blend of violence and poetic delicacy that the novel charms. Southern’s first novel, Flash and Filigree was turned down by 17 timorous American publishers. It was Southern’s mentor, the "genius" English novelist Henry Green, who brought the book to the attention of a leading British publishing house, which released it to high praise. A fast-paced dark comedy, Flash and Filigree established Terry Southern as one of the finest American prose stylists to emerge in Paris after the War.
©1958 Terry Southern (P)2014 Audible Inc.
The Magic Christian
Summary
He's a grand guy, that Guy Grand - billionaire by birth, entrepreneur by avocation, and thoroughly unpredictable. He "keeps his hand in", buying into and revolutionizing industries ranging from championship boxing to African safaris. Is he a crackpot, or an eccentric, or perhaps a visionary with a goal of social redemption?Grand's greatest project, his tour de force, the cruise ship Magic Christian, sets sail on Easter Sunday, fully renovated into the most luxurious vessel ever to sail the seas. What's on board to regale the 400 carefully selected passengers? The Juilliard String Quartet...the Old Vic Company...a gorilla...gypsies...a gigantic bearded woman. It will cost Grand a pretty penny to get clear this time....
©2009 Terry Southern (P)2009 Phoenix
Texas Summer
Summary
An evocative, poignant coming-of-age novel set in rural Texas in the 1930s. Through events small and large, 13-year-old Harold Stevens grows up during a pivotal summer in the red-dirt backcountry of West Texas. With his friend C.K. Crow, the black field hand who works for Harold’s father, he shoots deer and quail, fishes for catfish, mends fences, grows and learns about marijuana, and tests his emerging manhood against bullies, bulls, and the irresistible charms of his horse-riding older cousin. During a hysterical trip to a circus sideshow, Harold and a buddy sneak backstage to see "The Great Hermaphrodite" and the "funny little old Monkey Man," whom they try to buy a beer. But danger waits on the fringe of this innocent time. When C.K.’s brother, Big Nail, appears after escaping from a chain gang, an inevitable and violent confrontation between the brothers is set in motion - a confrontation that will mark the end of Harold’s childhood.This inside view of Southern’s roots in Alvarado, Texas, where pastoral innocence belied an undercurrent of racism and violence, brings this novel of a boy’s transition to maturity vividly alive.
©1991 Terry Southern (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Blue Movie
Summary
A hilarious, wildly erotic, and biting satire of Hollywood, Blue Movie tells the story of King B., an Oscar-winning director who's determined to shoot the dirtiest and most expensive X-rated movie ever made; Sid Krassman, a producer who's made a fortune catering to the tastes of the American public, and Angela Sterling, a misunderstood sex symbol who'd give anything (and everything) for a chance to do something "serious." The set is fraught with monstrous egos and enormous libidos - the kind of situation that could only come from the imagination of the irrepressible Terry Southern.
©1970 Terry Southern (P)2014 Audible Inc.