Comments on: Strange Loves, Magic Christians, and So Much More: An Appreciation of Terry Southern

By: Sarte

Sarte — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:23:23 +0000

Huzza FL Tom! Well said. The effusive praise for drug-addled, vacuous nit-wits is a chimera at best and friable.

Hyperbolic writers like Burroughs and his ilk are less reflugent than repugnant. I am sure, however, they never owed their positions to union jobs and rent control….

By: Barry99

Barry99 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:55:13 +0000

FLTom – Having raked the author and editor over the coals for putting a period in the wrong place – not a significant error by any stretch of the imagination – it behooves the critic to get his own message correct. Well, you blew it and then went overboard on the catharsis crap. To be sure, using ‘conscious’ instead of ‘conscience’ is a considerably larger error – it’s not just a typo. And you want an ever bigger error? Being a ‘moderate’ Republican just after the Republicans finished trashing the country.

By: Juancho

Juancho — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:01:15 +0000

Lots of snide commenters here. The piece told me enough about Terry Southern, whose name I knew but whose work I didn’t, to make me want to read some of it. So good work on that.

I will agree with the guy who slammed the Beats – Kerouac, Ginsburg, Burroughs, and all the rest of those guys were talentless poseurs. Especially Gary Snyder. But let’s not confuse that lot with the New Journalists, whatever exactly that meant. Wolfe, Capote, and Thompson did real writing, and Southern fits in much better with them.

Since I am a moderate Republican, I completely disagree with the opinions of the author in the last four paragraphs. However, it’s just standard lefty potboiler stuff, thrown in as part of the standard lit crit essay formula, and not even the writer takes it seriously.

By: Christopher Thomas

Christopher Thomas — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:34:52 +0000

All this quibbling over a copyediting glitch shouldn’t detract from the fact that this is a fine appreciation of an excellent and neglected writer.

Thanks!

By: FLTom

FLTom — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:11:40 +0000

Touché, Tree. My mistake. Mmmm, it sure feels good to admit a mistake. It’s cleansing — cathartic, even. DV’s editor should try it sometime.

By: Tree

Tree — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:59:41 +0000

FLTom, I believe you mean “conscience” of the world.

By: FLTom

FLTom — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:39:33 +0000

The editor appears on the thread after a correction has been made, never mentions the correction, and takes me to task by claiming “Rodgers use of et al. is correct.” Well, uh, ya. It’s correct now because someone changed it from et. al. to et al. !

Thanks for the laugh, DV, and thanks for demonstrating once again, as if it were ever needed, the high ethical standards of the Left, the “conscious of the world.”

By: Barry99

Barry99 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:57:06 +0000

In fact, I would argue that Alvarado Texas is likely not in the ‘cultural’ south (but south only in the sense that the nation necessarily has a midway latitude separating north from south. It seems to me that, culturally speaking, anything west of I-35 is the west. That’s where southeast meets southwest. I say that not knowing particulars of Alvarado, however.

By: Tom Doyal

Tom Doyal — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:06:34 +0000

Terry Southern grew up in Alvarado, Texas, which is in the American South and in Texas, but is not in south Texas. Alvarado is southwest of Fort Worth. Nothing north of San Antonio, Texas, can be said to be in south Texas. This is a minor quibble. I enjoyed the article.

Tom Doyal

By: Sunil Sharma

Sunil Sharma — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:49:27 +0000

FL Tom:

Rodgers use of et al. is correct, and if that’s the best/all you can do to criticize the article, then clearly you have no point worth considering.

– Sunil

By: FLTom

FLTom — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:37:19 +0000

It’s a little off-putting to come across an amateurish grammatical error right at the beginning of a piece. How much confidence should one put in the author’s point of view if he or she never learned how to write properly?

Perhaps on the left grammar is seen as suppressive authority, its rules meant to be flouted, its defenders nothing more than soporific pedants in thrall to The Man. I’m not cool enough to be on the left, so I really don’t know.

What I do know, though, is that et al. means “and others.” Et is a complete rendering of the latin word for “and,” and is not contracted. Al. is a contraction for “alia,” the latin word for “others.” The expression is written “et al.”

By: John Bove

John Bove — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:37:33 +0000

I’m always happy to discover another Southern fan, but no mention of Flash and Filigree?

By: Mack Arch

Mack Arch — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:16:57 +0000

Wonderful to read an informed appreciation of Mr. Southern. But I was surprised to find no mention of the ebulliently toxic novel Blue Movie, especially amid so much discussion of Hollywood.

By: Barclay Bates

Barclay Bates — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:32:24 +0000

Cut the hype, Christy. Southern was an entertaining and worthwhile minor writer. That’s all.

By: r martin

r martin — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:40:08 +0000

the writer’s formulaic denunciation of america in the 1950s should not lead her to cedlebrate the rubbish produced by the likes of Burroughs, Kerouac and Ginsburg. Burroughs wrote cruel, sadistic and barbarous pornography, Kerouac produced what is likely the single most turgid and unreadable novel of the 20th century and the oeuvre of Ginsburg is adolescent self-indulgence at its worst. Had James Dean ever tried his ridiculously overrated hand at poetry, he would likely have produced risible pomposity like Howl.

so there,

By: Damon Gitelman

Damon Gitelman — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:11:23 +0000

Terry Southern’s work may not, as the author notes, shock readers today, but it’s worth noting that shocking readers was never Ter’s intention. “The important thing in writing,” Southern advised would-be satirists, “is the capacity to astonish.” In this respect, his best work holds up beautifully today: take a look at some items from ‘Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes’ (1967), for instance, ‘The Sun and the Still-born Stars’, ‘The Road Out of Axotle’, and ‘The Blood of a Wig.’ And, some works from the ’70s and ’80s can leave you stone-faced astonished as well, like ‘Heavy Put-Away’, ‘Fiasco Reverie’, ‘King Weirdo’ [about his beloved literary mentor E.A. Poe], and ‘Strange Sex We Have Known’ [written with William Burroughs]. Terry Southern is enjoying a much-deserved renaissance this decade, and his many admirers will be grateful to Christy Rodgers for her informed, inspired, and thoughtful piece. She shares the spirit of the late Michael O’Donohue of ‘National Lampoon’ and ‘Saturday Night Live’ fame when he wrote, “If there were a Mount Rushmore of American satire, Terry Southern would be the mountain they’d carve it from.”

By: anthony innes

anthony innes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:15:54 +0000

Terry Southern’s movie” Candy” do not overlook master piece . This simply brilliant flic ,I think before the magic christian raised my consciousness and allowed me to laugh at my contemporary mileu as few mediums could.Ringo,Richard Burton,Brando cameo and with Southern’s direction waste you.

By: Gordon Whiting

Gordon Whiting — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:24:02 +0000

Thank you for this thoughtful discussion on the continuing relevance of Terry Southern. I have found it hard to describe to others just why he is so great, but in saying his “dialogue is always pitch perfect and the milieu is coolly exact” gets close to the heart of his appeal. You can hear these conversations actually taking place, however absurd! And you laugh until you weep because the situations on display in Mr. Southern’s work stand firmly on the social logic to which we all subscribe, to one degree or another.

By: joed

joed — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:48:05 +0000

thanks so much for the wonderful article. of late, i have been thinking about how the world will change when the acid generation dies off. i did see The Magic Christian some time, i think in the late sixties. we were trippin’. i didn’t know Strangelove was satire untill about 1993.
having taken every drug in “every conceivable cobination” and still being alive (i think) … anyway, thanks for the great article.
another wonderful article, about HSThompson:
http://www.opednews.com/burgwin_031905_hunterThompsonSuicide.htm
what i want to know is what happened to all those millions of pot seeds that we planted from san diego to portland to seattle to des moines to chicago to new york. millions of’em.
thanks again and please more articles like this. people are so afraid these days. it is good to talk about drugs and writing and creativity and drugs so people espically kids wont be frightened.
thanks again