Now Dig This

An unforgettable chronicle of an era by one of America’s wildest—and most brilliant—comedic and literary minds

Edited by Nile Southern and Josh Alan Friedman

Starting with his landing at the Battle of the Bulge, Terry Southern showed a knack for winding up in the world’s most interesting places. He spent the fifties on the Left Bank of Paris, the sixties in mod London, and the seventies touring with the Rolling Stones. When the Beatles rolled out their famous pantheon of movers and shakers for the cover of Sgt. Pepper, Terry was the only guy wearing shades. When police broke heads during the ’68 democratic convention in Chicago, Southern was there to bear witness. And when Stanley Kubrick needed someone to make Dr. Strangelove funny, there was only one man qualified for the job. As the golden age of rock ’n’ roll wound down, Southern never stopped writing, and his prose never lost its trademark intensity. Filthy, fierce, and relentlessly dazzling, these letters, essays, stories, and interviews are an electric testament to one of the keenest wits of the twentieth century. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Terry Southern including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.

Terry Southern (1924–1995) was an American author and screenwriter. His satirical novels—including the bestselling cult classics Candy (1958) and The Magic Christian (1959)—and his screenplays for Barbarella, The Loved One, The Cincinnati Kid, Dr. Strangelove, and Easy Rider (the latter two of which were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay) established Southern as one of the leading literary and pop-culture voices of the sixties. His other books include Flash and Filigree (1958), Blue Movie (1970), Texas Summer (1991), and his first anthology, Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes (1967). In later years, he wrote for Saturday Night Live and lectured on screenwriting at New York University and Columbia University.