Terry Southern
The Magic Christian
1959, Grove Press
I know that we’re all supposed to hate Louis CK now–and I certainly agree with anyone who says that his admitted exhibitionist masturbation fetish stuff isn’t much fun to think about–but none of that changes how funny he’s been before. One of my favorite old bits of his is the one in which he wonders why more billionaires don’t use their resources to prank everyone.
“Buy every baseball team and make them all wear dresses.” Open up the world’s worst pet store, where every can of food costs $1 million and where the groomers tell you point-blank that they will have sex with your pets, and keep it open for decades just to confuse people.
The first time I heard it, I hurt myself laughing and, because I’m perpetually behind on my reading, I didn’t realize until this week that Terry Southern had the exact same idea way back in the 1950s when he wrote this still-hilarious novel. It’s about Guy Grand, a perfectly nice and fabulously wealthy fella who has money to burn and so he burns it by relentlessly fucking with the world.