The Flutter of an Eyelid

Novel set in Southern California in the 1920s, and a lost classic. One modern-day commentator has observed that the book was "killed by neglect".

“Here a fine novelist turns the circus of California life inside out in a novel which is brilliant, incisive, distinguished – and perverse.
His people are so exotic, so extraordinary, that at first they seem unreal – yet they can be recognized as the natural outgrowth of the abnormal conditions under which they live. A new Messiah walks on the waters for the new reels; Nudists dance in the moonlight for the Mayor of the city; a woman with a fondness for murdering her men experiments on her latest lover with a delightful new poison; a man kills himself because he has had every other thrill…”

This book was, in fact, a scabrously satirical portrait of Southern California's bohemian community, and in particular of prominent L.A. bookman Jake Zeitlin and his circle of friends and associates. Since it was Zeitlin himself who had originally introduced the author to this group -- invited him in, essentially -- he quite justifably viewed the book as an "insulting betrayal", and in fact took steps took legal steps against it. Brinig's caricature of Zeitlin ("Sol Mosier" in the book) was anti-Semitic "even by the most forgiving of standards," and Zeitlin, having seen a set of galleys prior to publication, threatened a lawsuit and thereby succeeded in having the most offensive passages removed from the book prior to publication. In spite of being out of print for over eighty years, the book has achieved a kind of quasi-mythic reputation, and has been cited as both a landmark in Southern California fiction and an early gay novel. David Fine, who discusses it at some length in his excellent book "Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction," describes it as possibly "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." It's also admired for its apocalyptic finale, in which the state is struck by a massive earthquake and falls into the ocean.