Terry Southern; Novelist Wrote ‘Candy’
Terry Southern, the satirical writer who sought “to astonish, not shock†with novels such as “Candy†and the screenplays “Dr. Strangelove†and “Easy Rider†that became icons of their era, has died. He was 71.
Southern, who was stricken last week while lecturing at Columbia University, died Sunday night at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. An autopsy was planned to determine the cause of death.
With Stanley Kubrick and Peter George, the once highly prolific Southern wrote the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.†The satirical film about Cold War paranoia, which ends with the dropping of an atomic bomb, won the Writers Guild Award for best screenplay of 1964.
“Easy Rider,†which Southern wrote with its stars Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in 1969, was a drug-culture, open-road film that spawned many clones and earned another Oscar nomination for best screenplay.
Introduced to Hollywood with “Dr. Strangelove,†Southern went on to co-write other favorite films, including, in 1965, “The Loved One,†which spoofed the funeral business, and “The Cincinnati Kid,†which starred Steve McQueen as a high-stakes poker player. In 1968 there was “Barbarella,†with Jane Fonda as a futuristic sex kitten, and in 1969, “End of the Road†and the screen adaptation of his novel, “The Magic Christian.â€
Southern’s first book was “Flash and Filigree,†which was published in 1958.
But he first attracted international attention later that year with the publication of “Candy,†a satire of Voltaire’s “Candide†that spoofed pornography. Southern wrote the controversial book with Mason Hoffenberg, initially using the joint pseudonym Maxwell Kenton. The book was banned by the French government, delayed a few years by fearful publishers in the United States and published only in a censored, shorter version in England.
“The Magic Christian,†another favorite that Southern wrote in 1959, detailed the life of a millionaire and how low people will sink in pursuing his money. The subsequent film starred Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr.
“The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock--shock is a worn-out word--but astonish,†said the novelist and screenwriter, who taught for many years at Columbia. “The world has no grounds whatever for complacency.â€
Southern, who enjoyed his greatest success in the late 1960s, has called the period “an era of change and astonishment . . . of new concepts in art, in music, in fashion. It was a time when rockers and artists mixed, when the musical, the social and the political intertwined, albeit not always gracefully.â€
His former wife, Carol Kauffman, blamed Hollywood for damming Southern’s stream of novels, claiming it ruined his discipline.
In 1992, the long moribund writer published his first novel in more than 20 years, “Texas Summer,†a somewhat autobiographical story of a young boy’s coming of age in rural Texas. A Times book critic wrote that it did not at all live up to past examples of what he termed Southern’s “neon imagination.â€
The reclusive Southern, who was born in Alvarado, a town 30 miles south of Ft. Worth, had earlier described himself as an ordinary Texas boy. Almost.
“There was this wild story by Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym,’ †he said. “I used to rewrite this story and try to make it wilder. And then once I showed it to my friend Big Lawrence. . . . ‘You must be crazy,’ he said. I think that’s when we began to drift apart--I mean, Texas and me.â€
Southern’s agent, Jimmy Vines, said the author recently completed the manuscript of a book titled “Virgin,†a satirical look at the history of Virgin Records and its artists.
The writer also contributed articles to the magazines Paris Review, Esquire, Argosy, Playboy and Nation, and in 1967 published a collection of short stories titled “Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes.â€
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.
A resident of suburban New York for most of his life, Southern is survived by one son, Nile.
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