"The Candy Men" by Nile Southern

Terry Southern's son tells the wacky tale of his dad's '60s pornographic masterpiece "Candy," whose heroine is both dirtier and more innocent than today's dead-eyed Britney nymphets.

By Charles Taylor

Jun 10, 2004 | "Dewy," I think, is the best word to describe Candy Christian, the heroine of Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg's "Candy." Implying freshness, virginality, naiveté. Candide recast as a teenage American girl, the disciple of both William Blake and Modess, Candy makes her way through a porno picaresque that, 45 years after it was first published, remains one of the wildest satires in American fiction.

"Candy" also remains one of American publishing's most convoluted stories, with conflicting claims of copyright, piracy and royalties. This is the mess that Terry Southern's son, Nile, sets out to untangle in "The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel 'Candy.'" He doesn't entirely manage it. The labyrinth of documents, contracts, letters, warring agendas, suspicions and egos Nile Southern is navigating here is frequently dizzying, and the details finally seem like background to the main story of a friendship gone wrong, and two literary careers sputtering out.

The basic story goes like this: Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, two expatriate American writers, met in Paris in the late '40s. They were part of a diverse group that included Mordecai Richler, James Baldwin, Alexander Trocchi and the set around his magazine Merlin, on one hand, and George Plimpton and the better-heeled set around the Paris Review on the other. Inevitably, one of the characters most struggling writers in Paris met at that time was the daring and wholly untrustworthy Maurice Girodias, founder of the notorious Olympia Press.

Girodias, often running from his creditors and from government censors, was the first to publish books like "Naked Lunch" and "Lolita." They appeared as part of his Traveler's Companion Series, a demure-looking series of baize-green paperbacks that encompassed not only those significant works of modern literature (along with Nabokov and Burroughs, French novelist Raymond Queneau was also represented) but pornography written for hire. Trocchi ("Cain's Book," "Young Adam") and the American Iris Owens ("After Claude") were among the writers who turned out porn for a quick buck. (Trocchi's "Helen and Desire" is, if you can find it, absolutely delightful smut.)

Over several years, Southern and Hoffenberg put together "Candy," whose authorship was attributed to one "Maxwell Kenton." When French authorities seized the book, Girodias merely republished it under the title "Lollipop." In the years following "Candy," Southern made a name for himself as a novelist ("The Magic Christian" and "Flash and Filigree"), journalist, and screenwriter ("Dr. Strangelove" and "Barbarella"), while Hoffenberg's flirtation with heroin became a lifelong love affair.

"Candy" was published in hardcover in America by Putnam in 1964. But due to the combination of the authors' carelessness and Girodias' underhandedness, the book, which was never properly copyrighted, was soon being pirated by a variety of other publishers. Southern and Hoffenberg lost thousands on the pirated editions. They also lost their friendship as Hoffenberg began to resent his partner's success and as Southern pulled away from Hoffenberg, who had become obsessed with settling the score with Girodias. It was Southern alone who was signed to write the screenplay for the -- unwatchable -- 1968 movie version of "Candy," one of the decade's most notorious bombs.

Next Page: The story of Southern and Hoffenberg's careers is a big downer, but their ribald, hipsterish correspondence is a delight

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