THE HIPSTERS
by Terry Southern edited by Nile Southern
A gathering of uncollected work by the celebrated master of black comedy.
Terry Southern (1924-1995) was known for his supremely sardonic take on the human condition as well as a “gonzo style [that] was imbued with a self-consciousness informed by his own quasi-celebrity,” in the words of his son and editor, Nile. The present volume existed as a working manuscript for decades, a companion of sorts to an unpublished novel called Youngblood. “It’s no wonder Terry didn’t return to The Hipsters, considering the intensely creative literary friendships he developed after his time at the Sorbonne [1948-1952],” writes Nile. “Rather than hanging out with lost souls, academics, and insouciant friends, Terry was mixing it up with poets, publishers, and grand eccentrics like Alex Trocchi, George Plimpton, Marilyn Meeske, Iris Owens, Doc Humes, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso.” The book is a hodgepodge of story sketches, ideas for books and screenplays, treatments, and other rough draft–ish pieces, all marked by Southern’s obvious pleasure at putting together roguish sentences. Some of the pieces could conceivably be outtakes from works like The Magic Christian, as when a narrator, having kept a truck driver from running over a sleeping junkie, suggests that he’s hauling not his stated load but instead, à la Henri-George Clouzot’s influential film The Wages of Fear, explosives. Among the best pieces in the book are sample pages from Southern’s screenplay for A Clockwork Orange, which, in the end, Stanley Kubrick rejected in favor of his own treatment, keeping Southern on as a producer for a time and then dropping him from the project entirely. Another revealing piece is a kind of keeping-busy thought experiment that Kubrick assigned him, coming up with sequels to Dr. Strangelove. The resulting “Strangelove Quartette” (1963), a screenplay of sorts, contains a provocation at the outset: "Does Strangelove have any emotional ties? Possibility of Sue Lyon being Strangelove’s daughter. Everyone else begging for shaft-priority.” Nothing came of it, and that’s lamentable indeed.
A most welcome collection for longtime Southern fans and neophytes alike.