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

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 Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s cover, Terry Southern was an audacious original. Now Dig This is a journey through Terry Southern’s America, from the buttoned-down ’50s through the sexual revolution, rock ‘n’ roll, and independent cinema (which he helped inaugurate by cowriting and producing Easy Rider), up to his death in 1995. It spans Southern’s stellar career, from early short stories and a Paris Review interview with Henry Green, to his legendary Esquire piece covering the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention with Jean Genet and William Burroughs and his equally infamous account of life neck-high in girls and cocaine aboard The Rolling Stones’ tour jet, to his memories of twentieth-century legends like Abbie Hoffman, Kurt Vonnegut, and Stanley Kubrick, with whom he wrote Dr. Strangelove. A voice electric with street rhythm and royal with offhand intellection … stuffed with strange and silken scraps. — Troy Patterson, Entertainment Weekly The subterranean Texan’s finest moments are exquisite reads … like a hot poker in the eye of conventional narrative. — A. D. Amorosi, Philadelphia City Paper The range of writing … [was] as lethal as Mailer claimed and still awaiting the attention it deserves. — Charles Taylor, Newsday … reveals a writer defined by his generosity, by the pursuit of fun and by an insatiable … literary appetite…. — Claire Dederer, The New York Times Book Review