Now dig this : the unspeakable writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 / edited by Nile Southern and Josh Alan Friedman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Southern, Terry.

Contributor:

Southern, Nile.

Friedman, Josh Alan.

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

viii, 263 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Grove Press, [2001]

Summary:

Acclaimed novelist, Beat godfather, prolific screenwriter, and one of the founders of New Journalism, Terry Southern was an audacious, outrageous American original. Now Dig This is an uncensored and hugely entertaining collection that spans the gamut of his stellar career. In Now Dig This, we meet "the rightful heir to Nathanael West" (Norman Mailer), the man Newsweek called "a hip social anarchist, and ... comic pornographer with a profound moral sense." 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. It paints a life at the height of social change spanning his Texas boyhood, the buttoned-down 1950s, through the sexual revolution, rock 'n' roll, and independent cinema (which he inaugurated by helping to produce, and cowriting, Easy Rider).

Gathered from Southern's archives are interviews, early short stories, a piece from his time as The Rolling Stones' court reporter, his hilarious unpublished expose on the Cuban invasion, as well as intimate, at times scandalous, portraits of William S. Burroughs, Abbie Hoffman, Stanley Kubrick, George Plimpton, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Jean Genet. Also included is Southern's Esquire article about the 1968 National Democratic Convention, which led to his role as a key witness in the conspiracy trial of the Chicago 7, and his account of the filming of the famous missing pie-fight scene from Dr. Strangelove.

Now Dig This confirms once and for all that Southern's literary corpus embodies some of the most extreme -- and extremely funny -- writing in contemporary American letters. It is a vivid testament from an American literary lion, and a hilarious and enlightening statement on the America he liberated from taking itself too seriously.

Contents:

Introduction: An Interview with Terry Southern / Lee Server 1

Tales

Heavy Put-Away; or, A Hustle Not Wholly Devoid of a Certain Grossness, Granted 17

A Run of Dimes 25

Fixing Up Ert 31

Blue Movie: Outline for Novel 40

Letters

Dear Ms. 47

Letter to Lenny Bruce 49

Letter to the Editor of National Lampoon aka Hard Corpse Pornography 51

A Letter to the Editor: Stiff Gook Rimming 53

Letter to George Plimpton aka Sports-Death Fantasy 56

Worm-ball Man 60

Behind the Silver Screen

On Screenwriting: An Interview from Movie People 65

Strangelove Outtake: Notes from the War Room 72

Proposed Scene for Kubrick's Rhapsody 86

Plums and Prunes 89

New Journalism

Fiasco Reverie 101

Grooving in Chi 118

The Straight Dope on the Private Dick 130

The Beautiful-Ugly Art of Lotte Lenya 147

Riding the Lapping Tongue 153

The Quality Lit Game

Placing a MS. with New Yorker Mag? 165

Flashing on Gid [Maurice Girodias] 168

Rolling Over Our Nerve Endings [William S. Burroughs] 176

Writers at Work [Henry Green] 179

King Weirdo [Edgar Allan Poe] 191

The Scandal Continues 195

When Film Gets Good... 197

Drugs and the Writer 206

Strolls Down Memory Lane

Strange Sex We Have Known [William S. Burroughs] 211

Frank's Humor [Frank O'Hara] 214

Memories of Michael [Michael Cooper] 222

Remembering Abbie [Abbie Hoffman] 230

Trib to Von [Kurt Vonnegut and George Plimpton] 233

Origins of the Lampman [Larry Rivers] 240

Epilogue: Drugstore Cowboys: A Conversation with Terry Southern and William S. Burroughs / Victor Bockris 248

Afterword: Now Dig the Archive / Nile Southern 259.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

0802116892

OCLC:

45463671