RED-DIRT MARIJUANA & OTHER TASTES

Terry turns on that Southern style in this upbeat collection that ranges from the quiet simpatico of the title story where a boy learns about the quality of red-dirt marijuana from his Negro friend to a musicologist who decides to mainline to learn about jazz to A South Summer Idyll which features two boys with a gun and no conscience or conception of the meaning of death. Then there's the would-be hipster, an American expatriate in Paris who collects Negroes and their life-style, a piece exploring a confrontation between Kafka and Freud, a non-fiction interview with a man who trained for the Bay of Pigs invasion and a definitely fiction interview with a male faggot nurse. The most outrageous story is about obtaining the ultimate high by shooting the blood of a schizophrenic. Mr. Southern, who engineered Candy and Dr. Strangelove has a savage, savant sense of humor teetering somewhere between The Realist and realism. He's hip, flip and always interesting.