Terry Southern, "Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes"
George Plimpton starts the introduction for this book by complaining that even though Southern wrote the script for Dr. Strangelove, nobody remembers his name, instead concentrating on the visuals of the film, most notably with Slim Pickins riding the bomb out of the airplane.
Well, so what? Southern wrote that scene, right?
Actually, I guess Southern is an icon of sorts, though I never knew anything about him before. Apparently, he�s on the cover of �Sgt. Pepper�s Lonely Hearts Club Band,� tucked between Lenny Bruce and Edgar Allan Poe. I can�t verify that as I�m not a fucking hippy, so I don�t have any Beatles albums.
The point is, I don�t know where I heard about him, I haven�t read anything by him before, and I didn�t know what book I was supposed to read. But I did know about him, so I grabbed this book by chance.
It turned out to be a collection of short stories, and they actually turned out to be pretty cool. How �bout that?
But not that cool. He has a sarcastic edge that I like but it also got old quickly, especially since he used the shock ending so many times that I failed to be shocked after a while.
My favorite shock ending came from this story about a woman who�s having a miserable fucking day and can�t wait to see her boyfriend. All day long she daydreams about how all the shit that she went through since she first woke up will melt away when she gets home and he opens the front door to greet her.
Finally, after plenty of other things go wrong, she arrives back at the house, walks up the landing, knocks playfully at the door, and waits for him to answer.
He opens the door, sees her standing there and says, �For Christ�s fucking sake, Elaine, I told you never to come here!�
And that�s where the story ends. Now that�s pretty funny.
