Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 [Hardcover]

Terry Southern (Author), Nile Southern (Editor), Lee Server (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2001

Acclaimed novelist, Beat godfather, prolific screenwriter, and one of the founders of New Journalism, as well as the only guy to wear shades on the Sgt. Pepper's album cover, Terry Southern was an audacious, outrageous American original. Now Dig This is a wild, uncensored, and hugely entertaining collection that spans the gamut of his stellar career. From an interview with Henry Green during the salad days of The Paris Review, to his account of life neck-high in girls and cocaine aboard the Rolling Stones' tour jet, Now Dig This is a journey through Terry Southern's America, spanning the buttoned-down 1950s through the sexual revolution, and continuing on to his death in 1995. It places Southern's more formal, early short stories alongside the uproarious "Wormball Man" skit he wrote for Saturday Night Live, based on items in the Weekly World News. It collects his Esquire piece covering the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention with Jean Genet and William S. Burroughs and his remembrances of twentieth-century legends like Abbie Hoffman, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and director Stanley Kubrick, with whom he wrote Dr. Strangelove. Now Dig This is a vivid testament from an American literary lion, and a hilarious, engrossing, and enlightening statement on the changing America in which he lived and worked.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this outstanding, volatile m‚lange of short pieces, Nile Southern repositions his father "the conduit between the Beatles and the Beats" as a Class Four hurricane in the Hipster Pantheon. Labeled "the Mt. Rushmore of modern American humor" by Saturday Night Live head writer Michael O'Donoghue (who hired him), Southern (1924-1995) is best remembered for his Oscar-nominated screenplays (Easy Rider; Dr. Strangelove) and novels (Candy; The Magic Christian). He also unleashed assorted anarchic articles, reviews (in the Nation), short stories and photo captions (Virgin: A History of Virgin Records, his last book). The opening interview from 1986 is followed by four stories that animate characters via expressive, askew vernacular. Letters to Lenny Bruce and George Plimpton, plus a hilarious commentary on female orgasms mailed to Ms. in 1972, are included. The famed pie-throwing sequence deleted by Kubrick from Dr. Strangelove is described in detail in "Strangelove Outtake: Notes from the War Room." Southern's sharp Esquire piece on the 1968 Chicago police attacks on protesters remains potent. Affectionate portraits of pranksters, poets and friends Plimpton, Maurice Girodias, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, Vonnegut, Frank O'Hara make the closing pages sparkle. Readers will be grateful to Nile Southern for unearthing Terry's "unclassifiable schools of literary invention" from mini-storage for this variegated, entertaining book. (June 1)Forecast: Psychedelic cover art angles full-tilt towards the target audience. Arriving four months after Lee Hill's biography of Southern (HarperCollins), this is promoted at www.terrysouthern.com, a site that suggests there is more material forthcoming.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Southern is probably best known for his screenplays, which include Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider, and Barbarella, and for Candy (1958), the erotic novel he coauthored with Mason Hoffenberg for the Olympia Press. Overseen by his son Nile, this posthumously published collection contains interviews, stories, letters, and memoirs, some of which appear here for the first time. Among the more interesting pieces are those that deal with filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, including a proposed scene for the movie that would become Eyes Wide Shut. There are memorable portraits of contemporaries such as William Burroughs, Frank O'Hara, and Larry Rivers and reminiscences of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, which he covered for Esquire alongside Burroughs and Jean Genet. As in most collections of this kind, the quality of the writing is sometimes uneven, but Southern's irreverent wit and outrageous humor usually make for lively reading. Recommended for contemporary literature and film collections. William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st edition (May 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802116892
• ISBN-13: 978-0802116895
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,606,555 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the long awaited sequel to Red Dirt Marijuana, May 31, 2001

By 

Lee Hill - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 (Hardcover)

In these heartless consumerist times, irony has become debased. Thus the arrival of this anthology of previously uncollected and unpublished work by Terry Southern is not only a delightful surprise, but profoundly neccesary. Just as his 1967 anthology, Red Dirt Marijuana, proved that Southern was not just the great black humorist of the post-WWII era, but a great short story writer and essayist, so does Now Dig This affirm that status. No one has ever managed to quite duplicate Southern's mastery of so many forms: the letter as put-on, gonzo journalism, literary criticism, screenwriting and short fiction. Southern fans will be delighted at the inclusion of "Heavy Put-Away", a superb essay on Kurt Weill, and reminscences of Stanley Kubrick and Frank O'Hara. For first time readers, I have only envy. Now Dig This will be your all expenses paid ticket to a world of darkness and laughter. To paraphrase Ringo Starr, who acted in adaptations of two Southern novels, Candy and The Magic Christian, Buy a Terry Southern book today. Now Dig This is a very, very good place to start your spending spree.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Vile, July 9, 2007

By 

Thomas Quale (Centerville, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 (Paperback)

A grave disappointment. I cast myself into the Great Pit of Squaredom, surely, by this judgement, but aside from some isolated good bits, including Southern's notes on working with Kubrick on Strangelove and his interview with Henry Green, this is a poor (unspeakable, indeed!) excuse for a collection--repetitive, full of tiresome hipster tics, willfully and wearyingly perverse, seeking shock for shock's sake, like a child misbehaving to get attention. Do not waste your time or your money on this unfortunate production. Buy a copy of The Magic Christian instead.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He's Too Hip, Baby!, June 1, 2001

By 

Jim Yoakum (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 (Hardcover)

It's hard to imagine today, but there once was a time when the simple written word could send shudders of fear and loathing down the spines of mainstream America. And no one gave Mr and Mrs Front Porch USA the shakes more than Terry Southern. His novel "Candy" was banned and branded as pornography before it even reached our shores; his take on the military in "Doc Strangelove" earned him the label "pinko." But, like all great satirists (which he certainly was) know, "telling it like it is" often times means "taking your lumps like a man." And Terry took plenty of lumps, and humps, but never let his trials and tribs get in the way of "making it hot" for people. Although the mighty lions of 60's pop culture are now - alas! - all nearly gone, this volume of previously unseen TS works serves as an excellent reminder of a time when humor meant more than just being funny, and words alone had the power to give people the coniptions. And as "Now Dig This!" reminds us, while Southern took on all comers and suffered no fool gladly, he was a gentle giant who did so whilst nudging us playfully in the ribs - not poking us in the eye. "Now Dig This!" is a great addition to any modern humor library, and a worthy addition to the Southern canon. Bravo.