It was the girls, however, who were the motif of this scene. They turned and twisted in their seats, laughing to left, right, and behind, whispering, signaling with mystery and import. The girls were grouped, of course, and these groups seemed to vie with one another as to which could laugh the more often, with the most bitterness, and with the most emphatic finality. They leaned across each other, whispering things to which the others gave bent attention, then all would laugh with such a burst of savage and somehow sexual derision as to give the impression that what had just been said could only have been the most sensational obscenity conceivable to them, a peripheral bon mot relating to some fantastically heinous perversion of the Dean.
“Do you like Bach?” asked Ralph, looking over the program.
“Love him!” said Babs, perhaps a bit too loud.
Several titters were heard and a girl, sitting slouched next to Babs, a lean, dry-lipped, sloe-eyed blonde whose shorn locks bunched their fullest an inch above her eyebrows, looked up from a book by Jean Genet, her mouth set in a pained distant smile.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was going to be casual?” Babs asked in a disturbed whisper.
“But I did,” protested Ralph.
“But I mean like this!”
“Well—”
Then the music began. Babs sat stiffly upright through the piece looking straight ahead. When it ended, someone behind her said “Oh, love him!” in a harsh stage whisper. And Babs joined in the light applause, trying to smile, even with her eyes. But Ralph saw from the side that the lower lids were so heavy with tears that any moment they would begin to trickle down her cheeks.
“Had you rather go some place else?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, almost soundlessly, and they left their seats, the girl walking in front, her little black hat perched high on her head, and her sightless eyes still wide in the effort to ignore the nudging and giggling among the girls.
They didn’t speak then until they were in the car again.
“Sorry you didn’t like it,” said Ralph casually, showing a foolish annoyance, and Babs burst into tears, hiding her face in her hands and pulling away from the boy at once when he tried to console her.
“You’re ashamed of me,” she sobbed.
“What?” said Ralph.
“You are,” she insisted, pathetically, “—because—because I’m not in—intelligent.” She said this uncertainly, as though it might have been the first time she had ever had occasion to use the word. “. . . because I never went to college—you think I’m—I’m nobody—but I wanted to go—I wanted so much, Ralph—” and she raised her tear-traced face to him to plead the truth of it, “—and to be—to be—” but her voice trailed off in pitiful helplessness.
“Don’t be silly,” said Ralph, slightly unnerved, if only by the singular close-up of a girl in a smart hat crying in real anguish.
“Don’t be silly,” he repeated softly, kissing her eyes and cheeks, whereupon Babs herself may have sensed the incongruity for, a moment later, she pushed away from him to remove the hat, shaking her head, bringing a hand to her hair in little gestures of arrangement, which seemed to calm her wondrously.
Ralph started the car, and they drove down Wilshire Boulevard. Babs sat quietly, her face toward the window on her side, where the dead-dark trees fled past.
Neither spoke for a long while, and then they were parked on a thick-wooded hill overlooking the sea.
With the top down, it was a beautiful spring night; a full-rounded moon, all golden pink, lay low against the endless blue water like a great dripping orange.
“Does the moon look flat to you, or round?” asked Ralph.
“I don’t know,” said the girl sadly, looking at the moon.
He took her hand, and there were only the sounds of the tide-swept shore below, and the wind.
“Do you . . . do you love me?” he asked with a soft finality, as though these might somehow be his very last words.
All around them steeped the lazy depth of grass that strove gently toward shades of cobalt near the earth, unthreatened now and forever by a moon made soft through the light night-driven clouds and, seemingly too, by a wind that stirred the jacaranda above with a motion and sound no less languid than the caressing breath of the girl.
“Why, how do you mean?” she asked, seemingly really ingenuous.
It was almost midnight and, everywhere now, small night-birds were beginning to flutter and, finally, to sing.
“The way . . . I love you,” said the boy.
And the birds sang, softly, and in a way, too, that did seem to promise they would sing right on through forever, dawn after dawn.
Chapter XXXI
DR. EICHNER LAY in his own big bed, in the total darkness of his room, fully awake. On the night-table and scattered over the counterpane were about seventeen magazines.
The Doctor had retired at nine and had read for a while before turning out his lamp. He had fallen asleep straight away and had slept soundly for several hours, only to wake up suddenly, long before scheduled.
For five minutes he lay quite still, peering up into the darkness. Then he threw back one half of the top part of his counterpane, down from his shoulder to a diagonal across his chest, raised himself to one elbow, leaned toward the night-table, snapped on the lamp first, and then the Dictaphone. He picked up the mouthpiece, made a final adjustment to a dial on the set, switched off the lamp, and lying flat on his back, in absolute darkness, began to speak:
“A letter, Miss Smart, to:
Editor
Tiny Car.
17 rue Danton
Berne, Switzerland
Dear Sir:
In your issue of 17 January you feature the article, by Jock Phillips, “Should Miniature Cars Run?”
First, let me say that I have read this article, that is to say, I have read . . . strike out the last seven words, Miss Smart. Period. Without referring directly to this article, however, let us consider the veritable host . . . the veritable host . . . underscore “host,” Miss Smart . . . veritable host . . . do not repeat it, however . . . the veritable host of implications posed here that might best be treated categorically, that is to say, in the strict sense of . . . category. Underscore. Period. Now, by way of preface, let us take . . . let us take . . . but do not repeat it . . . let us take . . .”
A Biography of Terry Southern
Terry Southern (1924–1995) was an American satirist, author, journalist, screenwriter, and educator and is considered one of the great literary minds of the second half of the twentieth century. His bestselling novels—Candy (1958), a spoof on pornography based on Voltaire’s Candide, and The Magic Christian (1959), a satire of the grossly rich also made into a movie starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr—established Southern as a literary and pop culture icon. Literary achievement evolved into a successful film career, with the Academy Award–nominated screenplays for Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which he wrote with Stanley Kubrick and Peter George, and Easy Rider (1969), which he wrote with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.
Born in Alvarado, Texas, Southern was educated at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern, where he earned his bachelor’s degree. He served in the Army during World War II, and was part of the expatriate American café society of 1950s Paris, where he attended the Sorbonne on the GI Bill. In Paris, he befriended writers James Baldwin, James Jones, Mordecai Richler, and Christopher Logue, among others, and met the prominent French intellectuals Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. His short story “The Accident” was published in the inaugural issue of the Paris Review in 1953, and he became closely identified with the magazine’s founders, Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton, who became his lifelong friends. It was in Paris that Southern wrote his first novel, Flash and Filigree (1958), a satire of 1950s Los Angeles.
When he returned to the States, Southern moved to Greenwi
ch Village, where he took an apartment with Aram Avakian (whom he’d met in Paris) and quickly became a major part of the artistic, literary, and music scene populated by Larry Rivers, David Amram, Bruce Conner, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac, among others. After marrying Carol Kauffman in 1956, he settled in Geneva until 1959. There he wrote Candy with friend and poet Mason Hoffenberg, and The Magic Christian. Carol and Terry’s son, Nile, was born in 1960 after the couple moved to Connecticut, near the novelist William Styron, another lifelong friend.
Three years later, Southern was invited by Stanley Kubrick to work on his new film starring Peter Sellers, which became, Dr. Strangelove. Candy, initially banned in France and England, pushed all of America’s post-war puritanical buttons and became a bestseller. Southern’s short pieces have appeared in the Paris Review, Esquire, the Realist, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Argosy, Playboy, and the Nation, among others. His journalism for Esquire, particularly his 1962 piece “Twirling at Ole Miss,” was credited by Tom Wolfe for beginning the New Journalism style. In 1964 Southern was one of the most famous writers in the United States, with a successful career in journalism, his novel Candy at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and Dr. Strangelove a hit at the box office.
After his success with Strangelove, Southern worked on a series of films, including the hugely successful Easy Rider. Other film credits include The Loved One, The Cincinnati Kid, Barbarella, and The End of the Road. He achieved pop-culture immortality when he was featured on the famous album cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. However, despite working with some of the biggest names in film, music, and television, and a period in which he was making quite a lot of money (1964–1969), by 1970, Southern was plagued by financial troubles.
He published two more books: Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes (1967), a collection of stories and other short pieces, and Blue Movie (1970), a bawdy satire of Hollywood. In the 1980s, Southern wrote for Saturday Night Live, and his final novel, Texas Summer, was published in 1992. In his final years, Southern lectured on screenwriting at New York University and Columbia University. He collapsed on his way to class at Columbia on October 25, 1995, and died four days later.
The Southern home in Alvarado, Texas, seen here in the 1880s.
A young Southern with a dog in Alvarado, his hometown, around 1929.
Terry Southern Sr. with his son in Dallas, around 1930.
Southern’s yearbook photo from his senior year at Sunset High in 1941.
Southern before World War II. He was able to use the GI Bill to spend four years studying in Paris.
Southern’s 1949 student ID card from the Sorbonne. While abroad, he met many of the people with whom he would collaborate, including Henry Green, Richard Seaver, Alex Trocchi, William Burroughs, Ted Kotcheff, George Plimpton, and Mason Hoffenberg, with whom he wrote Candy (1958).
The first ever issue of the Paris Review (Spring 1953), which included Southern’s short story “The Accident.”
Outside Gaudí’s Sagrada Família Church in Barcelona in 1954. (Photo by Pud Gadiot.)
Terry and Carol Southern in Paris in 1956.
A page from the original draft of Flash and Filigree written between 1952 and 1957.
Working on The Magic Christian galleys in Geneva in 1958.
Gore Vidal’s rave write-up of The Magic Christian (1959), written on the back of a starched shirt backing. Vidal writes, “Terry Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation . . .”
The telegram that changed everything. This communiqué from Stanley Kubrick invited Southern to come to London to work on Kubrick’s new screenplay for the movie Dr. Strangelove (1964). Southern was instrumental in transforming the film from a political thriller into a satire.
Southern and his son, Nile, in Central Park in 1967. (Photo by Michael Cooper.)
From left to right: William S. Burroughs, Terry Southern, Allen Ginsberg, and Jean Genet, covering the National Democratic Convention for Esquire in Chicago, 1968. (Photo by Michael Cooper.)
Southern with his dog, Hunter, in Canaan, Connecticut, in the 1980s. (Photo by Nile Southern.)
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1958, 2002 by Terry Southern
cover design by Milan Bozic
978-1-4532-1730-6
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
Table of Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
A Biography of Terry Southern
Flash and Filigree Page 17