Resident eulogist Ben Conniff lifts a toast to one of our favorite satirists.
George MacDonald Fraser died on Wednesday at the age of 82. Fraser was most famous for The Flashman Papers, a series of faux-memoir novels chronicling the life of Harry Flashman, a debauched British soldier who romps across the globe, sleeps with hundreds of women, and witnesses some of the most critical events of the 19th century while fleeing duty as often as possible.
We published two of Fraser’s Flashman novels in unabridged serials: Flashman at the Charge (April, May, and June 1973) and Flashman in the Great Game (September, October, and November 1975). Each won the annual Playboy Writing Award for Best Fiction the following January. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of Flashman in the Great Game to get new readers acquainted with the anti-hero, and with Fraser’s biting prose:
I was going happily about my business, helping my dear wife spend her cash—which she did like a clipper hand in port, I’m bound to say—and you would have said we were a blissful young couple, turning a blind eye to each other’s infidelities and galloping in harness when we felt like it, which was frequent, for if anything, she got more beddable with the passing years.”
RSS 2.0
http://www.playboy.com/mt-tb.cgi/8821