The Ecstasy Business
The Ecstasy Business, first published by The Dial Press in 1967, was the seventh book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon. Already internationally famous at the time of its publication, primarily because of his 1959 Manchurian Candidate, this book was, somewhat surprisingly given his background, his first Hollywood novel. As a biographical afterword says:
"For twenty-two years, Richard Condon labored as a theatrical producer and movie press agent, presumably to acquire the authentic details that permeate this novel. Among the moguls for whom he beat the drum were Cecile B. De Mille, Sam Goldwyn, Otto Preminger, Frank Sinatra, Sam Spiegel, Darryl Zanuck, Walt Disney, and Howard Hughes." [1]
Told in the third person, it is the broadly comic story of Tynan Bryson, "the greatest film star of his generation", [2] and his torturous relationship with the director Albert McCobb, a blatant caricature of Alfred Hitchcock, and with his tempestutous ex-wife, an Italian film star to whom he has been married three times. Although satiric and sardonic in its depiction of the film business, it is so broadly drawn and implausible in its plotting and manner of telling that it is far more of a burlesque than Condon's previous books. Unlike most "Hollywood novels", in spite of its mockery of the subject, Condon appears to be writing more with affection than bitterness.
Critical reception
Title
The title, as is the case in six of Condon's first seven books, is derived from the last line of a typical bit of Condonian doggerel that supposedly comes from a fictitious Keener's Manual mentioned in many of his earlier novels:
- Let us go down to the peep show,
- For a taste of life and sex to see,
- Let us go down to that place of dreams,
- For a peek at the business of ecstasy.
- Let us go down to the peep show,
The verse is found in only one place, as an epigraph on a blank page four pages after the title page and two pages before the beginning of the text.[3]