The Open Road Blog

Your favorite show was on television. You had to walk the dog. You read the Cliff's Notes (or the review in the New York Times) and got the gist. And somehow, you never managed to actually read the book.

But when someone asks you about Bestseller X or Classic Novel Y at a dinner party, you fumble your way through the conversation and nod knowingly, right?

We consider ourselves smart, moderately well read folks. We’ve all got books that we meant to read—but just haven't gotten around to yet. We’ve got the best of intentions, but somehow there are ...

Today’s featured excerpt for Banned Books Week is Candy by Terry Southern. Terry Southern (1924–1995) was an American satirist, author, journalist, screenwriter, and educator and is considered one of the great literary minds of the second half of the twentieth century. His bestselling novel Candy (1958) is a spoof on pornography based on Voltaire’s Candide. It established Southern as a literary and pop culture icon.

Initially banned in France and England, Candy pushed all of America’s post-war puritanical buttons and became a bestseller. Read an extended excerpt from the book below.

“Terry Southern was one of the first and best of the new wave of American writers, defining the cutting edge of black comedy.”—Joseph Heller

Open Road Media announces the publication of Terry Southern’s Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes on June 14, 2011. It joins five other Terry Southern titles previously made available as ebooks in May, including Blue Movie, Flash and Filigree, Candy, The Magic Christian, and Texas Summer.

An underground classic, Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes is a brilliant collection of incisive, darkly comic, devastating stories and wide-ranging pieces by America’s master satirist. It ...

“Terry Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation.” —Gore Vidal

Open Road Media announces the publication of five titles by legendary novelist and screenwriter Terry Southern as ebooks on May 3, 2011, and one title on June 7, 2011.

Terry Southern (1924–1995), an American satirist, author, journalist, screenwriter, and educator, is considered one of the great literary minds of the second half of the twentieth century. His bestselling novels—Candy, a spoof on pornography based on Voltaire’s Candide, and The Magic Christian, a satire of the grossly rich—established Southern as a literary and pop ...