The Flutter of an Eyelid

by Myron Brinig, Lynd Ward (Illustrator)

Overview

The Flutter of an Eyelid, originally published in 1933, is a vicious, and often quite funny, satire of Southern California's bohemian community in the 1920s by Jewish-American novelist Myron Brinig (1896-1991). Illustrated by Lynd Ward (1905-1985).

Some of the novel's characters are loosely based on prominent residents of the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park, an early center of film-making on the West Coast. These include the rare book dealer Jake Zeitlin (1902-1987), whose shop became a gathering place for local writers and artists, and who introduced Brinig to his circle of friends; and the charismatic evangelist and media celebrity Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944).

Zeitlin, who was caricatured as a self-loathing Jewish antique dealer in the novel, considered the book an "insulting betrayal" and, after seeing an early set of galleys, threatened to sue. He succeeded in having some of its more offensive anti-Semitic passages removed prior to its publication. Jewish himself, Brinig was no anti-Semite; he and Zeitlin simply did not get along. One source reports that shortly after the book was released, it was pulled from stores because of further legal threats from McPherson and some of the other individuals who were too "thinly disguised" in the novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780578749273
Publisher:	Richard Schober d/b/a Tough Poets Press
Publication date:	11/09/2020
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.76(d)

Editorial Reviews

"Brinig's novel is the great modernist fantasy of Los Angeles . . . although it is essentially unread today."

- David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2011

"A most unusual book-one that is wholly mad in places, savage and caustic in other places, and here and there set off with a wild and moving beauty."

- Bruce Catton, Newspaper Enterprise Association, October 12, 1933

"No American author has done anything quite like it, and at first glance one scarcely knows quite what to make of it. . . . A brilliantly bizarre tale, a sort of literary nightmare, quite fascinating through its very strangeness."

- Galveston Daily News, October 8, 1933

"It is both realistic and romantic, poetic and prosaic, ironical and beautiful, satirical and naive-but always decadent."

- The (Raleigh) News & Observer, October 22, 1933

"The strangest novel to come out of the territory . . . a novel not set in Hollywood or dealing with the making of movies, but saturated with every fantasy and dream associated with the region."

- David Fine, Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction, 2000

From the Publisher