"The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish."

The final author of the week is literary wild man Terry Southern (1924-1995).  Born in Alvarado, Texas, Southern would serve in WWII, hit the Sorbonne on the G.I. Bill, become part of the both the Greenwich scene of the 50's as well as the Swinging Sixties in London before working as a prominent screenwriter in the 70's.  I first became aware of Terry as a screenwriter, particularly with Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) (He also wrote the scripts for Easy Rider and Barbarella, among others.) The first book of Terry's that I tracked down was The Magic Christian (1959) due to my love of the uneven but wonderfully bizarre film of the same name, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr.  I've since read and seen the majority of this master satirist's work.