Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes

Book excerpt: Before New Journalism, before the waggish cinema of Woody Allen, before the Gonzo World of Hunter S. Thompson, Saturday Night Live, and National Lampoon, there was the legendary Terry Southern—author of Candy and The Magic Christian and the screenwriter of Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider. Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes, widely recognized as an underground classic, is a collection of Southern's short pieces, two dozen hilarious, well-observed, and devastating sketches that expose the hypocrisy of American social mores. This edition features an introduction by George Plimpton, one of Southern's longtime literary allies and former editor of The Paris Review. “Terry Southern is the illegitimate son of Mack Sennett and Edna St. Vincent Millay.” —Kurt Vonnegut “Terry Southern writes a clean, mean, coolly deliberate, and murderous prose.” —Norman Mailer “If there was a Mt. Rushmore of modern American humor, Terry Southern would be the mountain they carve it on.” —Michale O'Donoghue “Impressive . . . He is both acutely aware of, and the absolute master of the nuances, the ludicrous snobbishness, the deliberate exclusivity of clique vocabulary. . . . With demoniacal cunning he masquerades as the guardian of taste, of responsibility, and of common decency (Mr. Southern's italics, of course).” —New York Times