The Genius of Terry Southern
May - July 2024
( Terry saluting Lenny Bruce (who had injured his ankles )
By David L. Ulin, The Paris Review, March 18, 2019
Terry Southern hit me like a drug. He wasn’t the first—before him, there was Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, Joseph Heller—but he was certainly the weirdest, or maybe just the most intent on subverting the dominant narrative. He seemed to want to take the piss out of everything, writing novels that were fiercely and deliriously ironic, disdainful of material obsessions and the hypocrisies of the bourgeoisie. I first discovered him through the copy of Candy my father kept stashed in his bureau, as if Southern were a rumor or a ghost. But it was only after I made my way to college that I began to understand. One evening, in the row house I rented with six friends in West Philadelphia, I caught the 1969 film adaptation of his novel The Magic Christian (Southern had cowritten the screenplay) on after-hours TV. There was an image of a ten-pound note, so large it filled the screen, and then the voice of Peter Sellers, who played the billionaire Guy Grand, announcing in a clipped Oxbridge accent: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is what is commonly known as money. It comes in all sizes, colors, and denominations, like people. We’ll be using quite a bit of it in the next two hours. Luckily, I have enough for all of us.”
Southern was a genius, can we just say that? He was a vivid mimic, a writer of outlandish set pieces; just think of the demonically twisted “Mrs. Joyboy” scene he wrote for the film The Loved One. He liked to start simply, in something close to believable reality. Then he would push the boundaries, until the whole world seemed to explode. Take his first novel, Flash and Filigree, published in 1958. Influenced by his great hero Henry Green, the book opens as a young man, Felix Treevly, visits the “world’s foremost dermatologist,” Dr. Frederick Eichner, at his clinic on Wilshire Boulevard. Treevly is pretentious, arrogant; “a small boil,” he sniffs, referring to his ailment, “actually a cystic mass—or wen if you like, extremely small, no larger than the common variety of facial pustule.” He is, in other words, an almost perfect Southern target, so full of himself he is aware of little else. “Yes, of course,” the doctor murmurs, then slams a padded paperweight into the top of the patient’s skull. The act appears to have erupted out of nowhere, as if the poles of the narrative have been reversed. Protagonist? Antagonist? What’s the difference? In Southern’s universe, how would we know? This is the point, a world without, in any real sense, heroes, in which the disrupters (Treevly, Guy Grand in The Magic Christian, Blue Movie’s Boris Adrian) and the disrupted are equally complicit.
To write like this reflects a serious moral vision, fueled by equal parts humor and rage. Southern, however, works his anger slowly, letting it emerge out of his scenes. Later in the novel, Eichner finds himself at a police station after an accident, where he is treated as a suspect, in part because of his name. “Well, well, well! How long have you been in this country, Mister?” asks the precinct captain. “What are you, Doctor? Dutch or German-Jew?” Eventually, Eichner arrives at a television studio for a taping of the quiz show What’s My Disease? Contestants are wheeled onstage “completely obscured in a sort of raised, shrouded cage … ‘Can you speak?’ asked the moderator … ‘Yes,’ was the muted reply.” As the audience gasps and cheers, a panel including “a prominent woman columnist, a professional football coach, an actress, and a Professor of Logic from the University of Chicago” asks a series of questions to determine the disease. “ ‘Is it elephantiasis?’ demanded the Professor … ‘Yes, it IS elephantiasis!’ and at that moment, as the shroud was dropped and the contestant revealed to them all, the audience took in its breath.”
Here, Southern defines a whole hipster style, putting on his characters and his readers until the boundaries between fantasy and reality are effectively erased. With its outlandish believability, the way it takes our fascination with the grotesque and turns it back on us, What’s My Disease? sits at the center of the novel, the funhouse mirror that reflects the truth. It’s a gag, of course it is, a strategy for poking fun at a culture that makes entertainment out of illness. And yet, if that seems outrageous, it only means we’ve missed the point. Take a look around: sixty years after Flash and Filigree was published, a generation past its author’s death at seventy-one, in 1995, we now have a president (a real one) who, among other outrages, mocked a disabled reporter on the campaign trail. We are living in a Terry Southern novel, in which insanity has been reframed as normal, so often, so astonishingly, that we barely notice anymore.
This, of course, represents another kind of complicity, one that implicates us as much as any character, which was Southern’s point all along. Treevly, for all his posturing, his self-importance, is more or less dangerous mostly to himself. Less so the doctor, who arranges (no spoiler here, you’ll have to read it) his nemesis’s final fate. And yet, who are we supposed to side with? Whom do we see as aggrieved? It is a kind of transference Southern is provoking, a way to cast our innocence into question, to lay bare our contradictions, our most private, and conflicted, selves. He’s a humorist, yes, but the real joke is on us, the way his novel turns it around, leaving us uncomfortably revealed. His touch is so light we barely notice. And when we do, we laugh knowingly at the recognition, even as it makes us bleed.
I never got over Terry Southern. I never got over Flash and Filigree. For me, it is the finest of his novels, a twisted parable about hypocrisy—a collective condition, like amnesia, from which there is, there can be, no escape. “After a point,” Southern writes, describing an encounter between a hospital supply salesman and the senior service nurse at Dr. Eichner’s clinic, “it was no longer a genuine laugh but some unnerved noise of control as she forcibly seized the rhythm of the laugh and propelled it, in the illusion of riding it out; as if that dead laugh were this same laugh dying; or yet, again, as how past the brief wildness of un-reined flats, horses slow and mounted men gain control at last beginning to ride, but do know then, in their heart of hearts, that the race is over.” This is who, and where, we are.
David L. Ulin is the former book critic of the Los Angeles Times. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author or editor of ten books, including Sidewalking and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award.
New
edition of CANDY, Summer 2018
with an introduction by B.J. Novak
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"I’ve
been fixated on Mason Hoffenberg and Terry Southern’s
Candy since I first came across it in college. I’ve
read it out loud many times to try to capture and understand
its rhythm; I’ve given many copies to friends. And yet,
what is it? And—even more intriguingly, and more on
this in a second — why is it?" |
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March
29, 2018: A previously unpublished selection from
The Magic Christian...
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Get
your tickets now, to see the movie "Dr. Strangelove"
(in Thessaloniki,
Greece)
— Screenplay by Terry Southern, Stanley Kubrick,
and Peter George —
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And
speaking of which:
BBC names "Dr. Strangelove" second best comedy
of all time:
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A
new edition of CANDY, by Terry
Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, will be released by Grove
Press in mid-2018.
One
of the great underground classics of its era, CANDY
also enjoys the honor of being one of the most pirated books
ever published.
Learn
more about the book, its authors, and its astonishing history
at:
THE
CANDY MEN |
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News
flash: High-ranking Trump administratioin officials deny contact
or conversation with ambassador of hostile foreign power ...
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A
message from Canada:
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Inauguration
Day, January 20, 2017 ...
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Ordering
information for Special Edition...
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A
screening of the film, based on the novel...
Is
this "Magic Christian" month? Maybe... trailer for the
1969 film:
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Perhaps
you are not stranded on a desert island.
Nevertheless,
it's always wise to prepare.
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July
18, 2016
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Here
is part 5 of a series about the 1968 Democratic Convention in
Chicago,
which ran in The
Paris Review...
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The
Criterion Collection, an assemblage of greatest movies ever,
has added the article below to its website...
More
about this movie, at The Criterion Collection's website ...
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The
Terry Southern Literary Trust and
The Terry Southern Official Website extend congratulations to:
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Many
thanks to Christy Rodgers for
this article ...
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Terry
Southern's letters available, from ANTIBOOKCLUB:
"The
greatest novelist-screenwriter ever to come out of Alvarado —
and that's wildly underselling the
accomplishments of someone responsible for Dr. Strangelove,
Easy Rider, and Candy — turns out to have
been a funny
and prolific writer of letters to the likes of Gore
Vidal, Norman Mailer, and at least two Beatles." –
Texas Monthly
* * *
Kirkus
Reviews
October 29, 2015 — review
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May
1 is the birthday of Terry Southern — who would
be 91 years young today.
As always on days dedicated to the life and art of TS
(or, any and every day), we recommend again:
WRITE
SOMETHING ASTONISHING !
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Many
thanks to Michael
Simmons for sending in a review of Dr. David
Tully's scholarly
study of TS that first ran in High Times, Terry
Southern and the American Grotesque
Simmons
is a Los Angeles-based writer and regular contributor
to MOJO,
High Times, and
The Huffington Post, among other publications.
His band in New York City in the 1970s, Slewfoot,
is considered the progenitor of the musical genre, "country
punk."
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from
The Paris Review daily blog, March 3, 2015:
"The
Terry Southern Prize is a $5,000 award honoring “humor,
wit, and sprezzatura” in work from either The
Paris Review or the Daily.
Perhaps
best known as the screenwriter behind Dr. Strangelove
and Easy Rider,
Terry Southern was also a satirical novelist,
a pioneering New Journalist, and a driving force behind
the early Paris Review.
This
year’s prize will be presented by
Donald Antrim to Mark Leyner for
'Gone with the Mind,' a story from our new Spring issue."
Previous
winners:
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The
CANDY Men
released in a new edition !
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With
a new preface by author Nile Southern acknowledging CANDY's
50th anniversary this year, and featuring an extensive reminiscence
from artist Richard Prince (a great fan of the novel), The
CANDY Men has been reprinted by Skyhorse Publishers—and
is also available as an audiobook.
Winner of Colorado's
'Book of the Year' for Creative Non-Fiction, 2005,
The CANDY Men tells the
story of the writing, suppression (in France and America), and
the peculiar phenomenon of the book's great success in America:
a runaway bestseller in 1964, banned in cities across America,
defended by libraries and librarians across the country, and (because
of a copyright technicality) massively pirated, such that Candy
was one of the most widely available, controversial and highly
publicized novels in America. This phenomenon, as well as the
success of Dr. Strangelove
the same year, prompted Victor Bockris to declare that in the
mid-'60s, "Terry Southern was the most famous writer in America." |
More
about The CANDY Men below ...
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New
in The Paris Review: LETTERS between Terry Southern
and George Plimpton. The previously unpublished correspondence
shed fascinating light on Southern's 1958 interview with Henry
Green—the novelist Tonybee once described as a "terrorist
of language", and the man who became Southern's mentor.
The
hilarious exchange stands as a prime example of Southern with
his 'Quality-Lit Game' on steroids—for as much as Terry
disparaged the obvious rigging of the industry, he played it to
a proverbial 'T'; having (quite independently from The Paris
Review) sought out this inspiring novelist (Green) who had
taken the novel form by storm and rewritten its rules with each
outing.
Terry's
letters are currently being prepared for publication with ANTIBOOKCLUB
for 2015.
Care
to check out a few in advance?
Check out the Fall 2014 edition of The Paris Review!
In
Issue
No. 22 of The Paris Review, Terry interviewed British novelist
Henry Green.
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Terry
Southern's first novel, Flash and Filigree,
has been released in audio format
by Audible.com and is available
for downloading:
The
TS.com website noted the 40th anniversary of this novel's publication
date a few years ago:
2008
marks the 40th anniversary of Terry's first novel,
Flash and Filigree, first published in London
by
Andre Deutsch in 1958.
Among
the book's earliest fans was the English novelist Henry
Green, who awarded it 'Book of the Year' for
the London Observer.
Below
are a selection of different printings, including the
Grove Press edition currently in print and available through
The
Grand Guy Shoppe.
"A
coolly mad book in dancing prose, Flash and Filigree is
startlingly original."
—
Detroit Sunday Times
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When
the founders of The Paris Review
were planning their new publication, Terry submitted a short story
from this novel-in-progress
entitled "The Accident". The Review's founding editors,
who had considered including criticism and essays, changed their
minds
after reading Terry's submission, and chose to make The
Paris Review a jounal of fiction and poetry only.
And the rest, as someone, somewhere once said, is history ...
The
book is available at The Guy Grand Shoppe in paperback and Kindle
editions.
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May
1st, 2014 would be Terry Southern's
90th Birthday.
Who
knows what he would make of the circus we find ourselves in
these days—and what projects he'd be launching?
We invite you to think, read, do, or say something subversive
this day, this week — in honor of the Grand Guy, Terry
Southern.
Southernistas
around the world will be celebrating. Join in the merriment:
Write
something
astonishing!
Tip
of the Hat!
*****
"Terry
Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation..."
— Gore Vidal
"If
there were a Mount Rushmore of American satire, Terry Southern
would be the mountain they’d carve it from."
— Michael
O’Donoghue
"Terry
Southern's fiction, in short form or long, is a national treasure."
— Bruce Jay Friedman
A
Facebook Page:
Terry Southern, Author
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Other
news from the Southern Hemisphere
this May Day:
2014
is the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Publication of Candy,
by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg
Nile
Southern's non-fiction award-winner,
The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious
Novel, Candy,
is being released as an audiobook.
Details ...
2014
is the 5Oth anniversary of the film,
"Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb,"
screenplay by Terry Southen, Stanley Kubrick and Peter George.
Many
publications, including those of of the "Quality-Lit."
variety, have included feature articles on the making and
ongoing relevance of this movie, which the American Film Institute
named one of the 10 best American films,
and one of the top 3 comedies of all time.
*****
Director
William Friedkin and others on 'Dr. Strangelove' ... (video)
*****
Digital
Journal:
Op-Ed:
'Dr. Strangelove' – Still hilarious and potent after 50
years
Dangerous
Minds:
Dr.
Strangelove’ as ‘a Cold Blade of Scorn Against the
Spectator’s Throat’
The
New York Review of Books:
Happy
Birthday, Dr.Strangelove!
The
Los Angeles Times:Throwback
Thursday:
'Dr.
Strangelove' released 50 years ago this week
A
Facebook Page:
Terry
Southern, Author
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Gail
Gerber, professional dancer, actress, and Terry Southern's
companion of many years,
died Saturday, March 1.
Her
autobiography, Trippin' with Terry Southern: What I Think
I Remember, received the
Independent
Publisher Silver Medal Book Award for Memoir/Autobiography
Variety
magazine notice ...
Cinemaretro
notice ...
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November
22, 1963 — Classic outrageous fantasy (or truth?!?)
about President Lyndon Baines Johnson...?
Earlier
this year, Smoke Signals,
in conjunction with the Terry Southern Literary
Trust, reprinted Terry's story,
“The
Blood of a Wig.” — which can be found in
Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes.
"MY
MOST OUTLANDISH DRUG experience, now that I think about it, didn’t
occur with beat Village or Harlem weirdos, but during a brief
run with the ten-to-four Mad Ave crowd."
The
quintessential drug tale, inspired by a conversation Southern
had with Realist editor
Paul Krassner about the "parts
left out of the Manchester book," includes the now classic
outrageous fantasy of Lyndon Johnson having "intercourse"
with JFK's neck wound — aboard Air Force One. The story
first appeared in 1967 in Evergreen Review (R.I.P. Barney
Rosset).
AND
...
A
video discussion about Ter's early magazine writing for Esquire
and The Realist,
with reference to "The Blood of a Wig:" |
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End
of the Road is on the road again, this time at the
Dallas landmark, The Texas Theatre.
Nile Southern will be there to introduce the 1970 underground
classic.
Scroll
down to read more about the film Terry
Southern co-wrote and co-produced.
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J.D.
Daniels Named Recipient of Third Annual
Terry
Southern Prize for Humor by the Paris Review
at
the publication's annual Revel
—
congratulations! —
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A collection of outrageous Terry Southern writings in
one very limited edition volume...,
Hot
Heart of Boar & Other Tastes
Limited edition features rare and unpublished works, including
a selection from Terry Southern's
The Hunters of Karinhall
— "a bloody brilliant uproduced screenplay",
according to the publisher's
website. A letter to William Burroughs, “K.Y.
Madness,” and other little-known writings. Introductory
commentary by Nile Southern, and with ultra-fab illustrations
and collage by Norman Conquest.
"In
short, it’s is a full-boar feast for famished fans
of black humor."
Check with Black Scat Books for availability |
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Open Road Integrated
Media announced this week the publication of an ebook edition of
Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry
Southern, 1950-1995......
Open
Road has published six novels and anthologies of Terry's work in recent
months."Terry
Southern (1924–1995) was an American satirist, author, journalist,
screenwriter,
and educator and is considered one of the great literary minds of the
second half of the twentieth century.
"Kirkus
Reviews on Now Dig This, April 2001—
ELECTION 2012 —
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"The
Magic Mormon":
In his Huffington Post article this week, Ariel
Gonzales, English professor at Miami Dade College, reminds
us:
"On November 6, every voter should
recite the epigraph from
The
Magic Christian, which Southern borrowed from the Texas
Rangers:
"Little man whip a big man every
time if the little man's in the right and keeps a'comin'."
Do
you need a copy? Maybe two? Perhaps 100? Visit the Guy Grand
Shoppe, below ...
September
18, 2012 – Indiewire magazine features an in-depth article
on
the re-release of END OF THE ROAD, cult film that helped define
independent filmmaking.
-
AND -
ALSO:
Long
lost film END OF THE ROAD hits
stands September 19th
Read
Nile Southern's essay on EOR in Cineaste
"One of the great ‘lost films’ of the late
‘60s, the audacious, highly crafted End
of the Road, has haunted generations of audiences—especially
film buffs—not only on account of its virtual disappearance—but
because it captured on film, with cool detachment, the tumultuous
zeitgeist of its times. The film also marks a big screen ‘first’
for cinematic super-talents: James Earl
Jones, Stacy Keach, Harris Yulin and the film’s
Director of Photography: Gordon Willis."
— Nile Southen
From
the film’s opening frame, the sound-editing, music selection
and a hauntingly original score by Teo Macero, combine to form
a tour-de-force of exquisitely paced and interwoven textures....
End
of the Road now joins a prestigious group of formerly
‘X’- rated films, including Midnight Cowboy
(1969), and
A Clockwork Orange (1971). These powerful, disturbing
visions of society’s outcasts, much-maligned at the time
of their release, have been cleansed of the stigma of ‘porn’—with
the MPAA certifying them as ‘R’.
Press
release from Warner Bros., August 14, 2012
—
END OF THE ROAD —
Co-written and co-produced by Terry Southern
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COUNTERPUNCH
mid-September 2012 issue, includes feature
article on the
publication of a new German-language edition of
BLUE
MOVIE
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"Terry
Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation
and in
The Magic Christian he surpasses
Flaubert's Bouvard et Pécuchet, a work similarly
inspired
by conventional wisdom's serene idiocy."
— Gore Vidal
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And,
speaking of The Magic Christian ...
SEPTEMBER
6. 2012
Six Funny American Novels (and Harpo Speaks!)
Jay Ruttenberg
"At
the end of the day, I suppose Terry Southern's masterpieces are
Flash and Filigree and the Dr.
Strangelove screenplay.
But there is no book that makes me laugh like The
Magic Christian..."
(Some
Southernistas might beg to differ, but we're a peaceful lot ...
)
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Smoke
Signals, in conjunction with the Terry
Southern Literary Trust, has reprinted Terry's classic
story,
“The
Blood of a Wig.” The quintessential drug tale,
inspired by a conversation Southern had with Realist
editor
Paul Krassner about the "parts
left out of the Manchester book," includes the now classic
outrageous fantasy of Lyndon Johnson having "intercourse"
with JFK's neck wound—aboard Air Force One. The story first
appeared in 1967 in Evergreen Review (R.I.P. Barney Rosset).
The
e-book edition of Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes, and other
works by Terry Southern, are available
at Open Road Integrated Media.
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"The
Art of Screenwriting", by Terry Southern (excerpt)
The
Paris Review prepares to celebrate its 200th edition
— with the Fall 2012 issue ...
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Details
... |
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Terry's
story, "You're Too Hip, Baby" was recently
selected for inclusion
in
the U.K.'s
National Short Story Day website.
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An
update from Open
Road Integrated Media, publisher of ebooks by Terry
Southern:
Flash and Filigree — Southern's satirical dream-logic
journey through the dark heart of 1950s Los Angeles —
is now part of the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. The Kindle
Owners' Lending Library gives Amazon Prime Members access to
select books to borrow and read for free as frequently as once
per month. Learn more about the program by visiting Amazon
and
their
offer about Flash and Filligree.
A
satirical dream-logic journey through the dark heart of 1950s
Los Angeles:
Southern’s
first novel, Flash and Filigree, was turned down by seventeen
timorous American publishers. It was Southern’s mentor,
the “genius” English novelist Henry Green, who brought
the book to the attention of a leading British publishing house,
which released it to high praise. A fast-paced dark comedy,
Flash and Filigree established Terry Southern as one of the
finest American prose stylists to emerge in Paris after the
War.
Dr. Frederick Eichner, world-renowned dermatologist, is visited
by the entrancingly irritating Felix Treevly who comes to him
as a patient and stays as an obsession. Prosaic incidents blossom
into bizarre developments with the sharpened reality of dreams
as the spectral Mr. Treevly leads the doctor into a series of
increasingly weird situations. With the assistance of a drunken
private detective, a mad judge, a car crash, a game show called
“What’s My Disease,” and a hashish party,
Treevly drives Eichner to madness and mayhem. It is through
comedy and a strange blend of violence and poetic delicacy that
the novel charms.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Terry Southern
including rare photos and never-before-seen
documents from the author’s estate.
“Mr.
Southern has given us a dazzling performance. This is the book
of the year.” — Henry Green, The Observer
“A
technical masterpiece . . . both maddeningly elliptical and
startlingly explicit.” — The Times
“Flash and Filigree is a very mysterious creation. Black
humor? More than that, much more ...
Terry Southern knows how to write!” — William
Burroughs
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New:
Interviews with Nelson Algren and Henry Green
in The Paris Review ...
The
Los Angeles Times recently covered the life and work of
producer
John Calley – one of Terry's Hollywood friends and
creative colleagues, who worked on
The Loved One and The Cincinnati Kid.
Buck
Henry reminiscences ...
Below:
John Calley (left) and Terry
(photo courtesy of Steve Schapiro)
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Red-Dirt
Marijuana And Other Tastes
Joins The Terry Southern Digital Collection at Open Road Media
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Amazon.com
has selected CANDY
as one of its Sunshine Deals:
the
Kindle Edition is available until June 15 for only $1.99 |
Sunday,
May 1, 2011: TERRY SOUTHERN DAY
The historic Texas Theater showed three
Terry Southern classics. Mayor's proclamation:
Robert
Wilonsky's coverage ...
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What
many have suspected is now confirmed: Vanity Fair,
March 14, 2011 – Details
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Dallas
Morning News corroborates the theory: maybe every
day is Terry Southern Day?
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—
Red-Dirt Collective an Innovative Transmedia Experiment
at SxSW — |
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Announcements
were made the weekend of March 13-14 at the South by Southwest
Music Festival in Austin, Texas – which now showcases
innovations in digital technologies.
Above:
Jean Genet and Terry Southern, on assignment for Esquire
to cover the
1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
(photo by Michael Cooper) |
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Terry
Southern: AMERICAN GROTESQUE
Recently
published scholarly study of Terry’s Southern’s
oeuvre available ...
Nearly
a decade in the making, David Tully's American
Grotesque lyrically examines Terry Southern’s
literary output, from the well-known novels, stories and
screenplays to lesser-known, unpublished/unproduced works,
offering the first comprehensive examination of the career
of this major American writer.
Nile
Southern's Introduction is online ...
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New
York Public Library exhibit features
Candide
and Candy — don't miss it!
Rare
manuscripts, new interpretations, pirated editions, and a fab
interactive online version of Voltaire's 1759
satirical classic — that inspired the infamous Southern
/ Hoffenberg's classic — on display through April
Nile
Southern's
Voltaire
/ Southern NYPL blog entry ...
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NEW!
Terry Southern re-vamped Grand
Guy Shop
Books, Albums, MP3s and more!
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