Politics & Power Quote by Terry Southern

Nepotism rarely announces itself with such mild, administrative calm. Terry Southern drops this little chain of custody - son, mother, prestigious series, hiring - as if he were describing a grocery list, and that flatness is the point. The sentence reads like a résumé footnote, but it smuggles in a whole social map of mid-century American letters: influence circulating through family, editorship functioning as gatekeeping, and “merit” arriving conveniently after the introductions have been made.

Southern’s intent isn’t to confess scandal so much as to normalize the machinery. “She hired me” is both modest and telling: he positions himself as a working reader, not a literary star, yet the proximity to the Best American Short Stories franchise signals status. The subtext is that literary authority is less a thunderbolt of taste than a committee process run by insiders with reliable networks. The detail that Martha Foley edited the series matters because it names the institution; it’s not a vague “publisher,” it’s the brand that certifies American short fiction.

There’s also a characteristically Southern, sideways irony: he’s known for skewering systems (Hollywood, war, masculinity), yet here he’s inside one, taking the job, doing the sorting. The line doesn’t posture as critique, but it can’t help sounding like one. By anchoring the anecdote in family relation first (“son of”), he lets the reader feel what the anthology’s mythology tries to hide: the canon is curated by people, and people hire people they already know.