Southern was an integral part of the post-Beat literary scene of the 60's. A "new journalist" (so proclaimed by Tom Wolfe) and screenwriter as well as an author, he may be best remembered for writing two very successful films, "Dr. Strangelove" and "Easy Rider." These and other playfully anti-establishment films like "Candy," "Barbarella" and "The Magic Christian" particularly captured the zeitgeist of the 1960's.
Southern didn't often wander into the introspective literary territory of the Beats, though when he did (as in some of the stories in his 1967 collection "Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes") he did it well. This book is my favorite Southern work: it begins with the sacred (white kid and black guy lazing happily around a ramshackle country village) and ends with the profane (a speed-crazed magazine writer searching for more drugs, in a story William S. Burroughs called "one of the funniest stories I have read in a long time.")
In 1968 Southern participated in the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention riots against the Vietnam War along with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jean Genet. He wrote many books, articles and films in the 70's, 80's and 90's, though without great popular success.
In 1981 and 1982 he even served as a writer for "Saturday Night Live," which is not a great honor as the show was going through one of it's worst phases at the time. On October 29, 1995, Southern died of respiratory failure while on his way to Columbia University, where he taught a screenwriting course.
In 1999 Terry's son Nile Southern created an impressive website in his honor.