Terry Southern (May 1, 1924 – October 29, 1995) was an American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style. Part of the Paris postwar literary movement in the 1950s and a companion to Beat writers in Greenwich Village, Southern was also at the center of Swinging London in the 1960s and helped to change the style and substance of American films in the 1970s. He briefly wrote for Saturday Night Live in the 1980s.
Southern's dark and often absurdist style of satire helped to define the sensibilities of several generations of writers, readers, directors, and filmgoers. He is credited by journalist Tom Wolfe as having invented New Journalism with the publication of "Twirling at Ole Miss" in Esquire in February 1963. Southern's reputation was established with the publication of his comic novels Candy and The Magic Christian and through his gift for writing memorable film dialogue, as in Dr. Strangelove, The Loved One, The Cincinnati Kid, and The Magic Christian. His work on Easy Rider helped create the independent film movement of the 1970s.
Biography Southern was born on May 1, 1924, in Alvarado, Texas. He graduated from Sunset High School in Dallas, Texas, in 1941. He attended North Texas Agricultural College for a year as a pre-med major before transferring to Southern Methodist University, where he continued to cultivate his interest in literature. From 1943 to 1945, he served in the US Army as a demolitions technician during World War II. Stationed in Reading, England, with the 435th Quartermaster Platoon (allowing for frequent forays to London), he earned a Bronze Star and a Good Conduct Medal. In the autumn of 1946, he resumed his studies at the University of Chicago before transferring to Northwestern University, where he received his undergraduate degree in philosophy in 1948.
Paris, 1948–1952 Southern left the United States in September 1948, using a G.I. Bill grant to travel to France, where he ostensibly pursued graduate studies at the Faculté Des Lettres of the Sorbonne; as funding was not contingent on the conferral of a degree or certificate, this was a common expedience employed by American bohemians of the era who wished to avail themselves of postwar France's enduringly favorable exchange rate, flourishing illicit markets and comparative dearth of discrimination against African Americans. His four-year stint in Paris was a crucial formative influence, both on his development as a writer and on the evolution of his "hip" persona. During this period he made many important friendships and social contacts as he became a central figure in the expatriate American café society of the 1950s. He became close friends with Mason Hoffenberg (with whom he subsequently co-wrote the novel Candy), Alexander Trocchi, John Marquand, Mordecai Richler, Aram Avakian (filmmaker, photographer and brother of Columbia Records jazz producer George Avakian), and jazz musician and motorsport enthusiast Allen Eager. He also met expatriate American writer James Baldwin and leading French intellectuals Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus.
Southern frequented the Cinémathèque Française in Paris and saw jazz performances by leading bebop musicians including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis, evoked in his classic "You're Too Hip, Baby". During the early 1950s he wrote some of his best short stories, including "The Butcher" and "The Automatic Gate", both published in David Burnett's New-Story magazine. His story "The Accident" was the first short story published in the Paris Review in its founding issue (1953); it was followed by "The Sun and the Still-born Stars" in issue #4. Southern became closely identified with the Paris Review and its founders, Peter Matthiessen, Harold L. "Doc" Humes, and George Plimpton, and he formed a lifelong friendship with Plimpton. He met French model Pud Gadiot in 1952; a romance soon blossomed and the couple married just before they moved to New York City.
Greenwich Village, 1953–1956 In 1953, Southern and Gadiot returned to the US and settled in Greenwich Village in New York City. As he had in Paris, Southern quickly became a prominent figure on the artistic scene that flourished in the Village in the late 1950s. He met visual artists such as Robert Frank and Larry Rivers. Through Mason Hoffenberg, who made occasional visits from Paris, he was introduced to leading Beat writers including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso.
He frequented renowned New York jazz venues such as the Five Spot, the San Remo, and the Village Vanguard. It was in this period that Southern read and became obsessed with the work of British writer Henry Green. Green's writing exerted a strong influence on Southern's early work, and Green became one of Southern's most ardent early supporters.
Southern struggled to gain recognition during this period, writing short stories as he worked on Flash and Filigree, his first solo novel. Most of these stories were rejected by leading magazines and journals. Here, as in Paris, Southern was almost entirely supported by his wife Pud, but their relationship fell apart within a year of their arrival in New York and they were divorced in mid-1954.
During 1954 and 1955. Southern met two of his literary heroes, William Faulkner and Nelson Algren. Southern interviewed Algren for the Paris Review in the autumn of 1955. They kept in touch after the interview, and Algren became another of Southern's early friends and champions.
Southern's fortunes began to change after he was taken on by the Curtis-Brown Agency in mid-1954; through them he had three of his short stories accepted by Harper's Magazine. It published "The Sun and the Still-born Stars" and "The Panthers" in the same edition in late 1955, and "The Night Bird Blew for Doctor Warner" was featured in the January 1956 edition.
In October 1955, Southern met model, aspiring actress, and editor Carol Kauffman. They were married on July 14, 1956.Hill, pp. 51–67.
Geneva, 1956–1959 Southern returned to Europe with Kauffman in October 1956, stopping off in Paris and then settling in Geneva, Switzerland, where they lived until 1959. Kauffman took a job with UNESCO, which supported them as Southern continued to write. The years in Geneva were a prolific period during which he prepared Flash and Filigree for publication, and worked on Candy and The Magic Christian as well as TV scripts and short stories. The couple made trips to Paris, where they visited Mason Hoffenberg, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, and to London, where Southern met Henry Green and Kenneth Tynan.
During his time in New York, Southern had written a short story "about a girl in Greenwich Village who got involved with a hunchback because she was such a good Samaritan" and this became the core of Candy, co-written with Mason Hoffenberg. On his return to Paris in late 1956, Southern showed the story to several people, including Hoffenberg, who thought the character should have more adventures. Southern encouraged Hoffenberg to write one; this became the sequence where Candy goes to the hospital to see Dr. Krankheit. The pair began alternately creating chapters, working together regularly on visits to Tourrettes-sur-Loup over the spring and summer of 1957. The book was introduced to publisher Maurice Girodias, probably by Marilyn Meeske (later Marilyn Meeske Sorel) who, according to Southern, thought Girodias would be interested in it as a "dirty book"."Interview with a Grand Guy", Lee Hill, 1996.
André Deutsch accepted Flash and Filigree, Southern's first novel, early in 1957, and the short story "A South Summer Idyll" was published in Paris Review No. 15. The Southerns spent some time in Spain with Henry Green during the summer, and Southern interviewed him for the Paris Review. Several more short stories were published later that year, by which time he was finishing work on Candy. Southern and Gregory Corso helped convince Girodias to publish the controversial novel Naked Lunch by then-little-known author Burroughs.
In early 1958, Southern made his first foray into screenwriting, working with Canadian director Ted Kotcheff, who had come to Britain to work for the newly established ABC Weekend TV company. Kotcheff directed Southern's TV adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, which was broadcast in the UK in March. This coincided with the publication of Flash and Filigree, which was well-reviewed in the UK but coolly received in the US
The first major magazine interview with Southern, conducted by Elaine Dundy, was published in UK Harper's Bazaar in August 1958. In October, Olympia published Candy under the pseudonym Maxwell Kenton, and it immediately was banned by the Paris vice squad.
The Magic Christian, Southern's first solo novel, satirically explores the corrupting effects of money. He finished the book in Geneva over the fall and winter of 1958–1959. and it was published by André Deutsch in spring 1959 to mixed reviews; however, it soon gained an avid cult following. By the time it had been published, the Southerns had decided to return to the US; they left Geneva for New York in April 1959.Hill, pp. 69–91.
East Canaan, 1959–1962 After moving back to the US, the Southerns stayed with friends for several months until they were able to buy their own home. They were looking for a rural retreat close enough to New York to allow Terry to commute there. Southern met and became friendly with jazz musician and bandleader Artie Shaw, and they began looking for properties together. Shaw put down a deposit on a farm in East Canaan, Connecticut, but at the urging of a friend Southern convinced Shaw to let him buy the farm, which he purchased for $23,000.
During 1959 and 1960, he continued working on a never-completed novel titled The Hipsters, which he had begun in Geneva. He became part of the New York artists and writers 'salon' of his old friend Plimpton—who had also moved back to New York— frequenting the Cedar Tavern, rubbing shoulders with writers James Jones, William Styron, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Harold "Doc" Humes, Jack Gelber, Jules Feiffer, Blair Fuller, Gore Vidal, Kenneth Tynan, the Aga Khan, the cast of the British comedy stage revue Beyond The Fringe, Jackie Kennedy, British actress Jean Marsh, and Tynan's first wife, Elaine Dundy, through whom Southern met satirist Lenny Bruce.
Flash and Filigree had been published in the US by Coward McCann in the fall of 1958. Several fragments from The Hipsters were published as short stories during this period, including "Red-Dirt Marijuana" published, in the January–February 1960 edition of Evergreen Review; and "Razor Fight", published in Glamour magazine. He had an essay on Lotte Lenya published in Esquire. In early 1960, he began writing book reviews for The Nation, which were published over the next two years. During the year, he collaborated with his old Paris friends Trocchi and Richard Seaver, compiling "Writers in Revolt," an anthology of modern fiction for the Frederick Fall company. The editing process took much longer than expected: A drug bust led Trocchi to flee to the UK via Canada, leaving Southern and Seaver to finish the book, and editor Stephen Levine was recruited to assist.
Terry and Carol's son and only child Nile Southern was born on December 29, 1960. Around this time, Southern began writing for Maurice Girodias' new periodical Olympia Review. He began negotiations with the Putnam company to reissue Candy under his and Hoffenberg's real names, and he hired Sterling Lord as his literary agent, .