Author Description

"Acclaimed novelist, Beat godfather, prolific screenwriter, and one of the founders of New Journalism, Terry Southern was an audacious, outrageous American original. Now Dig This is an uncensored and hugely entertaining collection that spans the gamut of his stellar career. In Now Dig This, we meet "the rightful heir to Nathanael West" (Norman Mailer), the man Newsweek called "a hip social anarchist, and... comic pornographer with a profound moral sense." From an interview with Henry Green during the salad days of The Paris Review, to his account of life neck-high in girls and cocaine aboard The Rolling Stones' tour jet, Now Dig This is a journey through Terry Southern's America. It paints a life at the height of social change spanning his Texas boyhood, the buttoned-down 1950s, through the sexual revolution, rock 'n' roll, and independent cinema [which he inaugurated by helping to produce, and cowriting, Easy Rider].". "Gathered from Southern's archives are interviews, early short stories, a piece from his time as The Rolling Stones' court reporter, his hilarious unpublished expose on the Cuban invasion, as well as intimate, at times scandalous, portraits of William S. Burroughs, Abbie Hoffman, Stanley Kubrick, George Plimpton, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Jean Genet. Also included is Southern's Esquire article about the 1968 National Democratic Convention, which led to his role as a key witness in the conspiracy trial of the Chicago 7, and his account of the filming of the famous missing pie-fight scene from Dr. Strangelove."--BOOK JACKET.