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

Terry's son, Nile, has honored his father (and done the rest of us a huge favor) by publishing this collection of the best of Terry's shorter works. Terry concluded at one point that film had surpassed literature as the communication medium of choice, and devoted most of the rest of his life to that arena. His interview "On Screenwriting" describes both the benefits and the frustrations associated with that choice. His advice is just as relevant to the would-be screenwriter today as it was when he wrote it. His "Proposed Scene for Kubrick's Rhapsody," and "Plums and Prunes," provide interesting examples of proposed movie scenes that will prove interesting to readers unfamiliar with that arcane art. As other reviewers have noted, "Grooving in Chi" is an excellent description of the Chicago riots during the Democratic National Convention in 1968. Finally, pieces like "The Beautiful-Ugly Art of Lotte Lenya," "When Film Gets Good," "Rolling Over Our Nerve-Endings [William Burroughs]," and "Writers at Work [Henry Green]" prove that he could write serious criticism. Through it all flows that wonderful, irreverent, sense of humor. Good stuff.

Wow -- here's two hundred fifty pages of wildly unclassifiable, wholly entertaining (and, yes indeed, unspeakable) bits and pieces of Southern's magazine writings, interviews, stories, and routines. A genuine literary anarchist with a wicked wit and an incredible eye for detail -- his Esquire piece on the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968 is classic eyewitness journalism -- Southern was also a screenwriter (Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove"), a satirist, and an agent provocateur who relished goading people into revealing their true personalities. Along the way, poor E.B. White of The New Yorker comes out the worse for Terry's over-the-top interogration techniques, I'm afraid. Fueled by booze, pills and powders, Southern swings through the decades not just as an observer but a participant at the center of it all (writer for National Lampoon and SNL, pals with Lennon, the Stones and Burroughs, as well as Kubrick and George Plimpton). It seems there's hardly a scene he doesn't make, including an appearance on the cover of "Sgt. Pepper." The book is filled with newly discovered bits of weirdness -- a lost scene for Kubrick's 1980 draft of "Eyes Wide Shut" then called "Rhapsody," an outrageous SNL sketch idea taken from National Enquirer called "Worm Ball Man," incendiary letters sent to the editors of Ms. Magazine, and a pitch to Lenny Bruce for a part in Southern's adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's "The Loved One" in 1964. It's easy to romanticize (and criticize) the alcohol and drug-taking frenzy of so much of Southern's work, yet the sheer variety of it all (of which this book is just a part) is amazing, not to mention the amount of "quality lit" he produced. Thanks to Nile Southern and everyone involved in bringing this compilation to print.

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.

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.

Hard core Terry Southern fans and first time readers alike will find much to enjoy in Now Dig This. This anthology is a wonderful distillation of uncollected and unpublished work spanning the buttoned down cool of the fifties to the post-Reagan and Bush nineties. Now Dig This offers readers a chance to rediscover Terry Southern in his many guises: as a great short story writer, master of the zany epistle, screenwriter par excellence, raconteur (his memories of working on Dr. Strangelove and staging pranks with Frank O'Hara are worth the cover price alone), critic, journalist (doing Gonzo before everyone else), and all around grand guy. For those who have become numbed out by the coopted irony of our consumerist present, it is refreshing and inspiring to back to the source. To paraphase Ringo Starr, buy a Terry Southern book today.