Terry Southern was born in Alvarado, Texas, on 1 May 1924. He was educated at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, where he received his B.A. in 1948, and the Sorbonne, where he studied from 1948 to 1950. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945. In 1956 he married Carol Kauffman; they have one son, Nile. Although primarily known as a novelist, Southern also has written a number of screenplays. He won the British Screen Writers' Award in 1964 and was twice nominated for an Academy Award: in 1963 for Dr. Strangelove and in 1968 for Easy Rider.

Flash and Filigree (1958), the first of Southern's novels, is, like the others, satiric black comedy. There are two parallel plots which occasionally intermingle but which are, for the most part, separate stories working themselves out simultaneously. The characters in each are only marginally influenced by one another, primarily because of their occupations. The...