enthalpy

Tuesday, March 17, 2009


Terry Southern wrote much of the hilarious dialog in one of the funniest movies of the 20th century, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Here's a great article about some of his other work, and how he fell out of the Hollywood system.
That’s why you need to read the stories. Southern’s short stories, both satirical and “serious,” are distinguished by prose mastery, subtlety and a truly mind-blowing range of genre and subject matter, possibly unique in U.S. fiction, from the magic realism avant la lettre of a Texas dirt farmer battling a mythical sea-monster in his melon patch, through the minutely examined lives of tragically hip expatriates in Paris, and insider views of the French working class, to the anomie and casual sadism of disaffected young boys. Whether the boys in these stories are in south Texas (where Southern grew up) or New York City, the dialogue is always pitch perfect and the milieu is coolly exact.
Imagine that? Writers used to write? I really like this quote from Michael O'Donoghue on Southern's wiki page:
"If there were a Mount Rushmore of American satire, Terry Southern would be the mountain they’d carve it from."
Ah satire, how I miss it.



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