A hilarious brilliant lunatic mind, Terry Southern. Genuinely "one of the greats". SHOW ME YOUR HUMP!
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Updike pays homage to the novel in one of his, where rising excitement has him following Southern’s “dialogue” at length. I hadn’t known _Candy_ enjoyed such success. (Can believe it works better on page than stage, and I may let that YouTube trailer go.) A surprising NYT recovery, of a work ahead of its time if likely not for all time. But not quite down the cultural garburator yet?
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A little unfair on "The Magic Christian", which is in many ways prescient. How about the segment when he changes the newspaper in Boston from "Facts" to "Opinions" thereby instigating a race riot which he cheers on, shouting from a bullhorn in a circling helicopter. Change a few details and it sounds pretty familiar. (And the movie with Peter Sellars and Ringo Starr, while also a bit chaotic, is better than that of
Candy.)
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Dwight Gardner wrote that "...Southern (1924-1995) was an inspired and anarchic second-rater, but more necessary than many so-considered first-raters." And all I really know from this piece is that I could never read Dwight Gardner's prose again. He's too cute, too clever, too much.
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@Jim
Garner has written some good reviews. This isn't one of them. It brings to mind another Terry Southern title: "You're Too Hip, Baby," and too condescending.
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I still have my 1964 hard bound copy of CANDY, which sustained me through a depressing period of military service. As a fan of Terry Southern, and something of a fan of Dwight Garner, this leaden review was a major let down. The only lightness, humor, sparkle is in the Southern quotes. The review's attempts at profundity or hip insight or whatever just fall flat. Lighten up, Dwight.
Great photo of T.S. and Rip Torn.
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"Blue Movie" wasn't mentioned in this article. My favorite.
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@Tom Levings
Couldn't agree more. An inspired work!
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I knew Terry Southern and admired him, but there is ample evidence that his contributions to films like Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider were on the level of dialogue punch-up. This is the kind of work that well-known authors and filmmakers, from Rick Russo to John Sayles, perform regularly, and generally with no screen credit.
Nothing wrong with that, but the hard work in screenplay writing is structural; dialogue is the fun stuff. Terry was, to put it mildly, unstructured in pretty much every way. (Often brilliantly so, often maddeningly.) Attributing those screenplays to Terry is a stretch.
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Golly! Do I have happy memories of reading this book in the summer of 1967 when I was (as Lonsdale's line from "On Approval" goes, "sweet sixteen, and I had never been").
The writing was memorable, and I still remember the excerpts cited in this article. Candy's was a Greenwich Village of the mind; it was a far tamer place when I lived there from 1975 to 1988.
Bravo!
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@Carl Ian Schwartz--I made a mistake: the line from Lonsdale's "On Approval" was, "When I was seventeen, and I had never been." But I read "Candy" when I was sixteen.
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