Research Catalog

Title

Flash and filigree : autograph manuscript fragments : [New York], [1952].

Author

Southern, Terry.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

1; 27 cm.

Note

• Written in pencil, with extensive autograph revisions.
• 16 leaves, 28 written on rectos and versos, one on recto only, and one on verso only.
• Foliated by Southern in four series arranged by him, with new arrangements of leaves incorporating inserts separately foliated and stapled together; staples removed and author's order preserved: leaves 2-6 (leaf 6, writing on recto only); leaf 21, followed by (i.e. formerly stapled to) 2, 5, 6, 7 (unfoliated, writing on verso only); leaf 22, followed by 2 and 3; leaf 23, followed by 23. Each series is housed in a separate folder.
• With brown paper envelope and two pieces of card stiffener, in which the manuscript leaves were housed; inscribed by Southern in black crayon "MS," underlined, and the following inscription in black pen: "A is for Horse from which a dozen smooth-edged conclusions could be drawn."
• These manuscript leaves formed part of the manuscript of Flash and Filigree separately acquired and cataloged as Berg Coll Cased Southern F53 1952.
• The Berg Collection houses two sets of typescripts of Flash and Filigree. The first is cataloged as Berg Coll m.b. Southern F53 1953; later typescripts are described in the finding aid for the Terry Southern Papers (boxes 7 and 8).
• William Styron recalled, in the Paris Review (v. 38, no. 138, Spring 1996), his reaction to Southern's manuscript: "That June [1952] I was busy in my room each afternoon, writing on a manuscript that would eventually become my short novel The Long March. One afternoon, unannounced, Terry showed up with his own manuscript and asked me if I would read it. [...] The manuscript he brought me made up the beginning chapters of Flash and Filigree, and I was amazed by the quality of the prose, which was intricately mannered though evocative and unfailingly alive. The writing plainly owed a debt to Terry's literary idol, the British novelist Henry Green, one of those sui generis writers you imitate upon pain of death, but nonetheless what I read of Flash and Filigree was fresh and exciting, and later I told him so."
• The first chapter of Flash and Filigree was published in the first issue of Paris Review by George Plimpton, and its appearance was, in large part, the reason that the journal became a venue for short fiction and not exclusively for poetry, as its editors had at first intended. In 2001 Plimpton wrote: "The first piece of fiction I saw of Southern's was, as it happened, instrumental in the birth of the Paris Review -- a short story (actually a section of his first novel, Flash and Filigree ) that persuaded Peter Mathiessen and Harold L. Humes to scrap the Paris-based New Yorker imitation they had in mind and start a purely literary magazine."

Access (note)

• Restricted access;

Call Number

Berg Coll m.b. Southern F53 1952

OCLC

777259111

Author

Southern, Terry.

Title

Flash and filigree : autograph manuscript fragments : [New York], [1952].

Access

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Research Call Number

Berg Coll m.b. Southern F53 1952