archives.nypl.org -- Terry Southern papers (original) (raw)

Terry Southern (1924-1995) was an American novelist, screenwriter, and essayist. Motivated by a dark comic sensibility and a delight in the outrageous, Southern's work explored the tumultuous culture of late 1950s and 1960s America. His best-known novels, the satirical Flash and Filigree (1958), Candy (1958), and The Magic Christian (1959), showcase his characteristic black humor, and in each case, follow the over-the-top journey of one or more protagonists from innocent idealist to worldly cynic. His screenplays, "Easy Rider" and "Dr. Strangelove" won acclaim for their ability to capture the rebelliousness and unease of the 1960s.

Southern was born in Alvarado, Texas in 1924 and raised in nearby Dallas. In 1943, he dropped out of Southern Methodist University to enlist in the Army, and was stationed for two and a half years in Reading, England. After returning to the U. S. and graduating with a Bachelor in Science from Northwestern University in 1948, he studied at the Sorbonne for four years, where he became friends with a group of American writers and artists that included Aram Avakian, Jean Stein, Mason Hoffenberg, George Plimpton, William Styron, and Peter Matthiesen. In 1953, he returned to the U. S. and settled in Greenwich Village, embracing the Beat scene and befriending Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and the artist Larry Rivers.

In 1956, Southern and his wife Carol returned to Europe, settling in Geneva (they would return to the U. S. for good in 1959 and buy a house in East Canaan, Connecticut). That same year, Southern began work on Candy, co-written with Mason Hoffenberg and inspired by Voltaire's Candide. Intended as a send-up of contemporary pornography, Candy, published in Paris by Olympia Press in 1958, was one of only a handful of books written in English and banned in France. It was published in the U. S. in 1964. Southern's Flash and Filigree was published in the U. S. in 1958 by Colum McCann; The Magic Christian followed in 1959. The latter attracted the attention of Stanley Kubrick, who invited Southern in the early sixties to collaborate on "Dr. Strangelove", a dark comedy about nuclear war. "Strangelove" established Southern as a hot screenwriter in Hollywood. Over his lifetime, he wrote or contributed to over 125 screenplays, including "The Cincinnati Kid" (1965), "The Loved One" (1965), "Barbarella" (1967), "Casino Royale" (1967), and the counterculture classic, "Easy Rider" (1968).

Throughout his career, Southern contributed regularly to The Nation, Esquire, The Evergreen Review, The Paris Review, and other publications. Tom Wolfe identified Southern's essay, "Twirling at Ole Miss", written for Esquire in 1962, as the first example of the New Journalism, and it is with this style of reporting and with the work of his contemporaries Truman Capote, Joan Didion, David Halberstam, and Hunter S. Thompson that critics categorize his nonfiction.

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