Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes (ISBN 0-8065-1167-2) is a collection of essays and short fiction works by satirical novelist and screenwriter Terry Southern

Terry Southern

Terry Southern was an American author, essayist, screenwriter and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style...

, which was first published in 1967.

It consists of twenty-four pieces which were originally published in Esquire

Esquire (magazine)

Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

magazine, Evergreen Review

Evergreen Review

Evergreen Review is a U.S.-based literary magazine founded by Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press. It existed in print from 1957 through 1973, and was re-launched online in 1998...

, Harper's Bazaar

Harper's Bazaar

Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...

, Hasty Papers, Nugget, The Paris Review, and The Realist

The Realist

The Realist was a pioneering magazine of "social-political-religious criticism and satire," intended as a hybrid of a grown-ups version of Mad and Lyle Stuart's anti-censorship monthly The Independent. Edited and published by Paul Krassner, and often regarded as a milestone in the American...

. It was re-published in 1990 with a new introduction by George Plimpton

George Plimpton

George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...

. A film was made of the title Southern short story with Southern's involvement by Philip D. Schuman which won a Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1973.

Stories

• Red-Dirt Marijuana
• Razor Fight
• The Sun and the Still-born Stars
• The Night the Bird Blew for Doctor Warner
• A South Summer Idyll
• Put-down
• You're Too Hip, Baby
• You Gotta Leave Your Mark
• The Road Out of Axotle
• Apartment to Exchange
• Love Is a Many Splendored
• Twirling at Ole Miss
• Recruiting for the Big Parade
• I Am Mike Hammer
• The Butcher
• The Automatic Gate
• A Change of Style
• The Face of the Arena
• The Moon-shot Scandal
• Red Giant on Our Doorstep!
• Scandale at the Dumpling Shop
• Terry Southern Interviews a Faggot Male Nurse
• The Blood of a Wig

Plots and themes

Like much of Southern's work, Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes presents a detailed portrait of American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 culture during the 1950s. Many stories, in particular You're Too Hip, Baby, The Blood of a Wig, and The Night the Bird Blew for Doctor Warner, explore the mentality of the hipster

Hipster (1940s subculture)

Hipster, as used in the 1940s, referred to aficionados of jazz, in particular bebop, which became popular in the early 1940s. The hipster adopted the lifestyle of the jazz musician, including some or all of the following: dress, slang, use of cannabis and other drugs, relaxed attitude, sarcastic...

 and the pretentiousness of counterculture

Counterculture

Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...

s.

Other stories, like Recruiting for the Big Parade and Twirling at Ole Miss, present unusual non-fiction, and may be viewed as an early form of gonzo journalism

Gonzo journalism

Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative. The word "gonzo" is believed to be first used in 1970 to describe an article by Hunter S. Thompson, who later popularized the style...

. Twirlin' at Ole Miss has been cited by Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe

Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...

 as one of the defining works of the genre and as such it was included in Wolfe and A.W. Johnson's anthology The New Journalism

The New Journalism

The New Journalism is a 1973 anthology of journalism edited by Tom Wolfe and E. W. Johnson. The book is both a manifesto for a new type of journalism by Wolfe, and a collection of examples of New Journalism by American writers, covering a variety of subjects from the frivolous to the deadly serious...

.

The majority of the book's stories, like the eponymous Red-Dirt Marijuana, simply present detailed character sketches and bizarre flights of fancy. In The Sun and the Still-Born Stars, a Texan

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 farmer wages a surreal

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, Beowulf

Beowulf

Beowulf , but modern scholars agree in naming it after the hero whose life is its subject." of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.It survives in a single...

ian struggle against a mysterious sea monster. In Love Is a Many Splendored, Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

 receives an obscene crank call from Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

. Beneath these strange juxtapositions, Southern explores themes of alienation

Social alienation

The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...

, love

Love

Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...

, and truth

Truth

Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...

.

The collection has been widely praised by authors such as Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer

Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...

, Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

, William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

, Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...

, and Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...

. Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...

 characterized it as "the cutting edge of black comedy

Black comedy

A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...

."