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{{Image|Richard Condon.jpg|left|150px|Richard Condon and friend on the back cover of ''[[Bandicoot]]'', 1979.}} | |||
'''Richard Thomas Condon''' (March 18, 1915, New York, New York – April 9, 1996, Dallas, Texas) was a prolific and popular American political novelist whose satiric works were generally presented in the form of thrillers or semi-thrillers. More than being particularly clever genre works, however, all 26 books were written in a style nearly always instantly recognizable as Condon's, while their focus was almost always obsessively directed at monetary greed and political corruption. Fast-moving and easily accessible, they generally combined elements of political satire, bare-knuckled outrage at the greed and corruption of those in power, and were written with extravagant characterizations and a uniquely sparkling and frequently humorous style. Condon himself once said: "Every book I've ever written has been about abuse of power. I feel very strongly about that. I'd like people to know how deeply their politicians wrong them." <ref>''Locus, The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field'', from their May, 1996, issue #424, obituary of Condon, exact page unknown</ref> Condon occasionally achieved bestseller status, and many of his books were made into films, but today he is primarily remembered for two of his works: an early book, ''[[The Manchurian Candidate]]'' of 1959, and, many years later, for four novels about a family of New York gangsters named [[Prizzi]]. | |||
of [[ | |||
==Basic theme throughout Condon's books== | |||
Condon's works are difficult to precisely | In ''[[Mile High (novel)|Mile High]]'', his eighth novel, one primarily about how a single spectacularly ruthless gangster named Eddie West imposes [[Prohibition]] upon an unwary American populace, Condon sums up the theme of all his books in a single angry ''cri de coeur'': | ||
<blockquote>"Prohibition fused the amateurism and catch-as-catch-can national tendencies of the early days of the republic with a more modern, highly organized lust for violence and the quick buck. It fused the need to massacre twelve hundred thousand American Indians and ten million American buffalo, the lynching bees, the draft riots, bread riots, gold riots and race riots, the constant wars, the largest rats in the biogest slums, boxing and football, the loudest music, the most strident and exploitative press with the entire wonderful promise of tomorrow and tomorrow, always dragging the great nation downward into greater violence and more unnecessary deaths, into newer and more positive celebration of nonlife, all so that the savage, simple-minded people might be educated into greater frenzies of understanding that power and money are the only desirable objects for this life."<ref>''[[Mile High]]'', The Dial Press, New York, 1969, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-80497, page 156</ref></blockquote> | |||
=="Manchurian Candidate"== | |||
Although not perhaps actually originated by Condon himself, his use of "the Manchurian Candidate" made that phrase a part of the English language. [[Frank Rich]], for example, in his column in the "Sunday Opinion" of ''The New York Times'' of August 17, 2008, writes <ref>''The New York Times'', Sunday, August 17, 2008, ''Sunday Opinion'', "The Candidate We Still Don't Know" at [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/opinion/17rich.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=The%20Candidate%20We%20Still%20Don't&st=cse&oref=slogin]</ref> | |||
about [[Barack Obama]] with a reference to both a well-known actress and a well-known plot element in the first movie version of Condon's 1959 book: | |||
<blockquote>"[Obama's] been done in by that ad with [[Britney Spears|Britney]] [Spears] and [[Paris Hilton|Paris]] [Hilton] and a new international crisis that allows [John] [[John McCain|McCain]] to again flex his Manchurian Candidate military cred. Let the [[Neocom|neocoms]] identify a new battleground for igniting World War III... and McCain gets with the program as if [[Angela Lansbury]] has just dealt him [[Queen of Hearts|the Queen of Hearts]]".</blockquote> | |||
=="The fiction of information"== | |||
Condon's works are difficult to categorize precisely: A 1971 ''Time'' magazine review declared that, "Condon was never a satirist: he was a riot in a satire factory. He raged at Western civilization and every last one of its works. He decorticated the Third Reich, cheese fanciers, gossip columnists and the Hollywood star system with equal and total frenzy." <ref>''Time'' magazine, "Cheese", March 4, 1971, at [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,905456,00.html]</ref> The headline of his obituary in ''The New York Times'' called him a "political novelist", <ref>''The New York Times'', Wednesday, April 10, 1996, ''Obituaries'', "Richard Condon, Political Novelist, Dies at 81; Wrote 'Manchurian Candidate' and 'Prizzi'" at [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00E4DB1039F933A25757C0A960958260]</ref> but went on to say that, "Novelist is too limited a word to encompass the world of Mr. Condon. He was also a visionary, a darkly comic conjurer, a student of American mythology and a master of conspiracy theories, as vividly demonstrated in 'The Manchurian Candidate.'"<ref>Ibid.</ref> Although his books combined many different elements, including occasional outright fantasy and science fiction, they were, above all, written to entertain the general public. He had, however, a genuine disdain, outrage, and even hatred for many of the mainstream political corruptions that he found so prevalent in American life. In a 1977 quotation, he said that: <ref>''Who's Who in Spy Fiction'', Donald McCormick, Sphere Books Ltd., London, 1977, page 64</ref> | |||
<blockquote>"...people are being manipulated, exploited, murdered by their servants, who have convinced these savage, simple-minded populations that they are their masters, and that it hurts the head, if one thinks. People accept servants as masters. My novels are merely entertaining persuasions to get the people to think in other categories."</blockquote> | <blockquote>"...people are being manipulated, exploited, murdered by their servants, who have convinced these savage, simple-minded populations that they are their masters, and that it hurts the head, if one thinks. People accept servants as masters. My novels are merely entertaining persuasions to get the people to think in other categories."</blockquote> | ||
With his long lists of absurd trivia and "mania for absolute details", Condon was, along with [[Ian Fleming]], one of the early exemplars of those called by [[Pete Hamill]] in a ''New York Times'' review, "the practitioners of what might be called the New Novelism... Condon applies a dense web of facts to fiction.... There might really be two kinds of fiction: the fiction of sensibility and the fiction of information... As a practitioner of the fiction of information, no one else comes close to him."<ref>"For Eddie West, power was all that mattered," by Pete Hamill, ''The New York Times'', August 31, 1969, at </ref> | |||
==Quirks and characteristics== | |||
Condon attacked his targets wholeheartedly but with a uniquely original style and wit that made almost any paragraph from one of his books instantly recognizable. Reviewing one of his works in the ''International Herald Tribune'', the well-known playwright [[George Axelrod]] (''[[The Seven-Year Itch]]'', ''[[Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter]]''), who had collaborated with Condon on the screenplay for the film adaptation of ''The Manchurian Candidate'', wrote: | Condon attacked his targets wholeheartedly but with a uniquely original style and wit that made almost any paragraph from one of his books instantly recognizable. Reviewing one of his works in the ''International Herald Tribune'', the well-known playwright [[George Axelrod]] (''[[The Seven-Year Itch]]'', ''[[Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter]]''), who had collaborated with Condon on the screenplay for the film adaptation of ''The Manchurian Candidate'', wrote: | ||
<blockquote>"The arrival of a new novel by Richard Condon is like an invitation to a party.... the sheer gusto of the prose, the madness of his | <blockquote>"The arrival of a new novel by Richard Condon is like an invitation to a party.... the sheer gusto of the prose, the madness of his similes, the lunacy of his metaphors, his infectious, almost child-like joy in composing complex sentences that go bang at the end in the manner of exploding cigars is both exhilarating and as exhausting as any good party ought to be."</blockquote> | ||
===Metaphors and similes=== | |||
From his 1975 novel, ''Money Is Love'', comes a fine example of the "lunacy of his metaphors": "Mason took in enough cannabis smoke to allow a Lipan Apache manipulating a blanket over it to transmit the complete works of Tennyson." <ref>''Time Magazine'', "Liederkranz", a book review by John Skow, June 2, 1975</ref> ''The Manchurian Candidate'' offers: | |||
<blockquote>"The effects of the narcotics, techniques, and suggestions... achieved a result that approximated the impact an entire twenty-five-cent jar of F. W. Woolworth vanishing cream might have on vanishing an aircraft carrier of the ''Forrestal'' class when rubbed into the armor plate."<ref>''[[The Manchurian Candidate]]'', by Richard Condon, paperback edition, Signet, New York, November, 1962, fifth printing, page 261</ref></blockquote> | |||
===Lists and trivia=== | |||
Condon was also enamored of long lists of detailed trivia that, while at least marginally pertinent to the subject at hand, are almost always an exercise in gleeful exaggeration and joyful spirits. In ''An Infinity of Mirrors,'' for instance, those in attendance of the funeral of a famous French actor and notable lover are delineated as: | |||
<blockquote>Seven ballerinas of an amazing spectrum of ages were at graveside. Actresses of films, opera, music halls, the theatre, radio, carnivals, circuses, pantomimes, and lewd exhibitions mourned in the front line. There were also society leaders, lady scientists, women politicians, mannequins, couturières, Salvation Army lassies, all but one of his wives, a lady wrestler, a lady matador, twenty-three lady painters, four lady sculptors, a car-wash attendant, shopgirls, shoplifters, shoppers, and the shopped; a zoo assistant, two choir girls, a Métro attendant from the terminal at the Bois de Vincennes, four beauty-contest winners, a chambermaid; the mothers of children, the mothers of men, the grandmothers of children and the grandmothers of men; and the general less specialized, female public-at-large which had come from eleven European countries, women perhaps whom he had only pinched or kissed absent-mindedly while passing through his busy life. They attended twenty-eight hundred and seventy strong, plus eleven male friends of the deceased.<ref>''An Infinity of Mirrors'', by Richard Condon, paperback edition, Fawcett Crest, New York, September, 1965, page 36</ref></blockquote> | |||
Writing about ''The Whisper of the Axe'' in the daily book review column of Friday, May 21, 1976, in the ''New York Times'', Richard R. Lingeman praised the book in particular and Condon in general for his "extravagance of invention unique with him." <ref>"A Thriller of the Condon Class", by Richard R. Lingeman, ''The New York Times,'' May 21, 1976, at [http://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FA0711F8395F167493C3AB178ED85F428785F9]</ref> | |||
Not everyone was as exhilarated by Condon's antics, however. In a long ''Times'' Sunday review just two days after Lingeman's, Roger Sale excoriated Condon as a writer of "how-to books" in general, this book in particular, and Condon's habit of using lists: "A lot of it is done with numbers abritrarily chosen to falsely simulate precision." <ref>Roger Sale, May 23, 1976, in ''The New York Times'', at [http://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F10F10FE395B177B8EDDAA0A94DD405B868BF1D3]</ref> | |||
===Real-life names in his books=== | |||
All of Condon's books have, to an unknown degree, the names of real people in them as characters, generally very minor or peripheral. The most common, which appears in all of his books, is some variation of Franklin M. Heller. Among them are F.M. Heller, Frank Heller, Franz Heller, Marxie Heller, and F. Marx Heller. The real-life Heller was apparently a television director in New York City in the 1950s, '60s, and 70s, who initially lived on [[Long Island]] and then moved to a house on Rockrimmon Road in [[Stamford, Connecticut]].<ref>[http://www.dga.org/news/mag_archives/v22-4/frank_heller.htm ''Remembrance of Frank Heller," by Ira Skutch, at]</ref> Beginning with ''Mile High'' in 1969, mentions of a Rockrimmon Road or Rockrimmon House also began to appear regularly in the novels. Late in life Heller grew a thick white beard and became a devotee of [[needlework]]—both traits that the fictional Hellers shared, sometimes to ludicrous effect, as when a battle-hardened Admiral Heller is depicted issuing orders while absorbed in needlework. The real-life Heller made one needlework depiction of the [[manor house]] in Ireland in which Condon was living at the time. In [[Prizzi's Honor]], Marxie Heller is a mobster and murder victim; in [[Prizzi's Family]], Franklin Heller is the mayor of New York City; in [[Prizzi's Glory]], the Heller Administration is mentioned, implying that he is the president of the United States. | |||
Condon was a great friend of actor [[Allan Melvin]], having written a nightclub act for him. Condon later became a publicist for [[The Phil Silvers Show]] ("Sgt. Bilko"), on which Melvin played Cpl. Henshaw. Melvin's name shows up in several Condon books, most prominently as hitman Al (the Plumber) Melvini in "Prizzi's Honor" (a play on Melvin's "Al the Plumber" character in Liquid-Plumr commercials.) In ''[[The Manchurian Candidate]]'', with the exception of Marco, Shaw and Mavole, all of Marco's platoon members are named for the cast/crew of "Bilko": (Nat) Hiken, (Maurice) Gosfield, (Jimmy) Little, (Phil) Silvers, (Allan) Melvin, (Mickey) Freeman and (Harvey) Lembeck. | |||
In [[Prizzi's Honor]], a New York City policeman named McCarry is mentioned once; the political thriller writer [[Charles McCarry]] was a friend of Condon's and, as a former operative of the [[C.I.A.]], was a occasional source of expertise in the field of [[Espionage|espionage]] for Condon. | |||
In a number of books a character named Keifetz appears, named apparently for [[Norman Keifetz]], a New York City author who wrote a novel about a major league baseball player called ''The Sensation''—that novel was dedicated to Condon. | |||
[[A.H. Weiler]], a film critic for the New York Times, was another friend of Condon's who made several fictional appearances, usually as Abraham Weiler but sometimes as a Dr. Abe Weiler. | |||
In ''The Oldest Confession'', a character has lunch in a Paris bistro and briefly meets two people playing chess at the bar, "Buchwald and Nolan, newspaper and airline peons respectively". Buchwald is certainly [[Art Buchwald]], the celebrated newspaper columnist and humorist, who, at the time of the book's publication, was still working for ''The International Herald-Tribune'', which was published in Paris, where Condon had also lived during the 1950s. The identity of Nolan, however, remains a mystery.<ref>''The Oldest Confession'', page 119</ref> | |||
==Career in films== | |||
For many years a Hollywood publicity man for Walt Disney and other studios, Condon took up writing relatively late in life and his first novel, ''[[The Oldest Confession]]'', was not published until he was 43. The demands of his career with United Artists—promoting dreadful movies such as [[The Pride and the Passion]] and [[A King and Four Queens]]—led to a series of bleeding ulcers and a determination to do something else. | For many years a Hollywood publicity man for Walt Disney and other studios, Condon took up writing relatively late in life and his first novel, ''[[The Oldest Confession]]'', was not published until he was 43. The demands of his career with United Artists—promoting dreadful movies such as [[The Pride and the Passion]] and [[A King and Four Queens]]—led to a series of bleeding ulcers and a determination to do something else. | ||
His next book, ''The Manchurian Candidate'', which combined all the elements that defined his works for the next 30 | His next book, ''The Manchurian Candidate'', which combined all the elements that defined his works for the next 30 years—nefarious conspiracies, satire, black humor, outrage at political and financial corruption in the American scene, breath-taking elements from thrillers and spy fiction, horrific and grotesque violence, and an obsession with the minutiae of food, drink, and fast living—quickly made him, for a few years at least, the center of a cult devoted to his works. As he quickly produced more and more books with the same central themes, however, his cult following fell away and his critical reputation diminished. But over the next three decades Condon continued to pull occasional surprises from his literary hat with books such as ''[[Mile High]]'', ''[[Winter Kills]]'', and the first of the Prizzi books, ''[[Prizzi's Honor]]'', that returned him to favor, both with the critics and the book-buying public. | ||
Of his numerous books that were turned into Hollywood movies, ''The Manchurian Candidate'' was filmed twice. The first version, in 1962, which starred [[Frank Sinatra]] and Angela Lansbury, followed the book with great fidelity, and is now generally recognized as one of the greatest films of all time. At the time, however, because of its perceived parallels with the 1963 assassination of [[John F. Kennedy]], it was quickly removed from circulation and it was not until its re-release in 1998 that it began to garner a general but belated acclaim. Janet Maslin, writing in 1996 in ''The New York Times'', said that it was "arguably the most chilling piece of cold war paranoia ever committed to film, yet by now it has developed a kind of innocence." <ref>''The New York Times'', Wednesday, April 10, 1996, ''Obituaries'', "Richard Condon, Political Novelist, Dies at 81; Wrote 'Manchurian Candidate' and 'Prizzi'" at [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00E4DB1039F933A25757C0A960958260]</ref> | |||
==[[The Keener's Manual]]== | |||
Beginning with his first book, ''The Oldest Confession'', Condon frequently prefaced his novels with excerpts of verse from a so-called ''[[The Keener's Manual|Keener's Manual]]''; these epigraphs foreshadowed the theme of the book or, in several instances, gave the book its title. ''The Keener's Manual'', however, was a fictional invention by Condon and does not actually exist. A "keen" is a "lamentation for the dead uttered in a loud wailing voice or sometimes in a wordless cry" <ref>''Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition'', Merriam-Webster, Inc., Springfield, Massachusetts, 2004, ISBN 0-87779-807-9 </ref> and a "keener" is a professional mourner, usually a woman in Ireland, who "utters the keen... at a wake or funeral." <ref>''Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged'', G. & C. Merriam Co., Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1943</ref> | |||
Five of Condon's first six books derived their titles the fictional manual, the only exception being his most famous book, ''The Manchurian Candidate''. The epigraph in ''The Manchurian Candidate'', however, "I am you and you are me /and what have we done to each other?" is a recurring theme in earlier Condon's books: in various forms it also appears as dialog in both ''The Oldest Confession'' and ''Some Angry Angel''. Among other epigraphs, the last line of "The riches I bring you /Crowding and shoving, /Are the envy of princes: /A talent for loving." is the title of Condon's fourth novel. His fifth and sixth novels, ''An Infinity of Mirrors'' and ''Any God Will Do'', also derive their titles from excerpts of the manual. | |||
Years later, Condon's 1988 novel [[Prizzi's Glory]] also had an epigraph from the manual, the first one in at least a dozen books. | |||
==Plagiarism charge== | |||
In 1998 a California software engineer noticed several paragraphs in ''The Manchurian Candidate'' that appeared nearly identical to portions of the celebrated 1934 novel ''I, Claudius'' by the English writer [[Robert Graves]]. She wrote about the apparent [[plagiarism]] on her website but her discovery went unnoticed by most of the world until Adair Lara, a longtime [[San Francisco Chronicle]] staff writer, wrote a lengthy article about the accusation in 2003. <ref>"Has a local software engineer unmasked 'The Manchurian Candidate'? Menlo Park woman says author Richard Condon plagiarized", by Adair Lara, in the ''San Francisco Chronicle,'' October 4, 2003; the entire article can be read at [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/10/04/DD13399.DTL]</ref> Reprinting the paragraphs in question, she also solicited the opinion of a British "forensic linguist", who concluded that Condon had unquestionably plagiarized at least two paragraphs of Graves's work. By this time, however, more than seven years had passed since Condon's death and Lara's article also failed to generate any literary interest outside the ''Chronicle''. | |||
Curiously enough, in ''[[Some Angry Angel]]'', the book that followed ''The Manchurian Candidate'', Condon makes a direct reference to Graves. In a long, convoluted passage on page 25 Condon reflects on "mistresses" and their apparently peripheral relationship, at least to the reader, to Graves's writings about "Major Male" Deities and "Major Female" Deities. As ''Angel'' was published only a year after ''Candidate'', there is no question, therefore, about Condon's familiarity with the works of Robert Graves.<ref>''[[Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale]]'', McGraw-Hill, New York, 1960, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-8826, page 25</ref> | |||
== | ==Works—all novels except as noted== | ||
* ''[[The Oldest Confession]]'', Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1958; Longman, London, 1959, as ''The Happy Thieves'' | * ''[[The Oldest Confession]]'', Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1958, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-8662; Longman, London, 1959, as ''The Happy Thieves'' | ||
* ''[[The Manchurian Candidate]]'' | * ''[[The Manchurian Candidate]]'', McGraw-Hill, New York, 1959, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-8533 | ||
* ''[[Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale]]'' | * ''[[Some Angry Angel|Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale]]'', McGraw-Hill, New York, 1960, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-8826 | ||
* ''[[A Talent for Loving | * ''[[A Talent for Loving|A Talent for Loving; or, The Great Cowboy Race]]'', McGraw-Hill, New York, 1961, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:61-10467 | ||
* ''[[An Infinity of Mirrors]]'' | * ''[[An Infinity of Mirrors]]'', Random House, New York, 1964, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-17935 | ||
* ''[[Any God Will Do]]'' | * ''[[Any God Will Do]]'', Random House, New York, 1964, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-21462 | ||
* ''[[The Ecstasy Business]]'' | * ''[[The Ecstasy Business]]'', The Dial Press, New York, 1967, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-14467 | ||
* ''[[Mile High]]'' | * ''[[Mile High]]'', The Dial Press, New York, 1969, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-80497 | ||
* ''[[The Vertical Smile]]'' | * ''[[The Vertical Smile]]'', The Dial Press, New York, 1971, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 978-0803796133 | ||
* ''[[Arigato]]'' (1972) | * ''[[Arigato]]'' (1972) | ||
* ''[[The Mexican Stove]]'' (1973)—cookbook co-written with his daughter Wendy Bennett | * ''[[The Mexican Stove]]'' (1973)—cookbook co-written with his daughter Wendy Bennett | ||
* ''[[And Then We Moved to Rossenarra|And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: or, The Art of Emigrating]]'', The Dial Press, New York, | * ''[[And Then We Moved to Rossenarra|And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: or, The Art of Emigrating]]'', The Dial Press, New York, 1973, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: PS3553.0487z5—memoir | ||
* ''[[Winter Kills]]'' | * ''[[Winter Kills]]'', The Dial Press, New York, 1974, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: PZ4.C746 Wi PS3553.O487 | ||
* ''[[The Star-Spangled Crunch]]'' (1974) | * ''[[The Star-Spangled Crunch]]'' (1974) | ||
* ''[[Money Is Love]]'' (1975) | * ''[[Money Is Love]]'' (1975) | ||
* ''[[The Whisper of the Axe]]'' (1976) | * ''[[The Whisper of the Axe]]'' (1976) | ||
* ''[[The Abandoned Woman]]'' (1977) | |||
* ''[[Death of a Politician]]'' (1978) | * ''[[Death of a Politician]]'' (1978) | ||
* ''[[Bandicoot]]'' (1979) | * ''[[Bandicoot]]'' (1979) | ||
Line 51: | Line 105: | ||
* ''[[Prizzi's Family]]'' (1986) | * ''[[Prizzi's Family]]'' (1986) | ||
* ''[[Prizzi's Glory]]'' (1988) | * ''[[Prizzi's Glory]]'' (1988) | ||
* ''[[Emperor of America]]'' | * ''[[Emperor of America]]'', Simon & Schuster, New York, 1990, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: PS3553.O487 E47 1990 | ||
* ''[[The Final Addiction]]'' (1991) | * ''[[The Final Addiction]]'' (1991) | ||
* ''[[The Venerable Bead]]'' (1992) | * ''[[The Venerable Bead]]'' (1992) | ||
* ''[[Prizzi's Money]]'' (1993) | * ''[[Prizzi's Money]]'' (1993) | ||
==Films adapted from Condon novels== | |||
* ''[[The Happy Thieves]]'', from ''[[The Oldest Confession]], 1962 | |||
* ''[[The Manchurian Candidate|The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)]]'', 1962 | |||
* ''[[A Talent for Loving|A Talent for Loving (film)]]'', 1969 | |||
* ''[[Winter Kills|Winter Kills (film)]]'', 1979 | |||
* ''[[Prizzi's Honor|Prizzi's Honor (film)]]'', 1985 | |||
* ''[[The Manchurian Candidate|The Manchurian Candidate (2004 film)]]'', 2004 | |||
==References== | ==References== | ||
<references/> | <references/> | ||
[[Category: | ==See also== | ||
*[[Crime fiction/Catalog of prominent writers]][[Category:Suggestion Bot Tag]] |
Latest revision as of 06:00, 12 October 2024
Richard Thomas Condon (March 18, 1915, New York, New York – April 9, 1996, Dallas, Texas) was a prolific and popular American political novelist whose satiric works were generally presented in the form of thrillers or semi-thrillers. More than being particularly clever genre works, however, all 26 books were written in a style nearly always instantly recognizable as Condon's, while their focus was almost always obsessively directed at monetary greed and political corruption. Fast-moving and easily accessible, they generally combined elements of political satire, bare-knuckled outrage at the greed and corruption of those in power, and were written with extravagant characterizations and a uniquely sparkling and frequently humorous style. Condon himself once said: "Every book I've ever written has been about abuse of power. I feel very strongly about that. I'd like people to know how deeply their politicians wrong them." [1] Condon occasionally achieved bestseller status, and many of his books were made into films, but today he is primarily remembered for two of his works: an early book, The Manchurian Candidate of 1959, and, many years later, for four novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi.
Basic theme throughout Condon's books
In Mile High, his eighth novel, one primarily about how a single spectacularly ruthless gangster named Eddie West imposes Prohibition upon an unwary American populace, Condon sums up the theme of all his books in a single angry cri de coeur:
"Prohibition fused the amateurism and catch-as-catch-can national tendencies of the early days of the republic with a more modern, highly organized lust for violence and the quick buck. It fused the need to massacre twelve hundred thousand American Indians and ten million American buffalo, the lynching bees, the draft riots, bread riots, gold riots and race riots, the constant wars, the largest rats in the biogest slums, boxing and football, the loudest music, the most strident and exploitative press with the entire wonderful promise of tomorrow and tomorrow, always dragging the great nation downward into greater violence and more unnecessary deaths, into newer and more positive celebration of nonlife, all so that the savage, simple-minded people might be educated into greater frenzies of understanding that power and money are the only desirable objects for this life."[2]
"Manchurian Candidate"
Although not perhaps actually originated by Condon himself, his use of "the Manchurian Candidate" made that phrase a part of the English language. Frank Rich, for example, in his column in the "Sunday Opinion" of The New York Times of August 17, 2008, writes [3] about Barack Obama with a reference to both a well-known actress and a well-known plot element in the first movie version of Condon's 1959 book:
"[Obama's] been done in by that ad with Britney [Spears] and Paris [Hilton] and a new international crisis that allows [John] McCain to again flex his Manchurian Candidate military cred. Let the neocoms identify a new battleground for igniting World War III... and McCain gets with the program as if Angela Lansbury has just dealt him the Queen of Hearts".
"The fiction of information"
Condon's works are difficult to categorize precisely: A 1971 Time magazine review declared that, "Condon was never a satirist: he was a riot in a satire factory. He raged at Western civilization and every last one of its works. He decorticated the Third Reich, cheese fanciers, gossip columnists and the Hollywood star system with equal and total frenzy." [4] The headline of his obituary in The New York Times called him a "political novelist", [5] but went on to say that, "Novelist is too limited a word to encompass the world of Mr. Condon. He was also a visionary, a darkly comic conjurer, a student of American mythology and a master of conspiracy theories, as vividly demonstrated in 'The Manchurian Candidate.'"[6] Although his books combined many different elements, including occasional outright fantasy and science fiction, they were, above all, written to entertain the general public. He had, however, a genuine disdain, outrage, and even hatred for many of the mainstream political corruptions that he found so prevalent in American life. In a 1977 quotation, he said that: [7]
"...people are being manipulated, exploited, murdered by their servants, who have convinced these savage, simple-minded populations that they are their masters, and that it hurts the head, if one thinks. People accept servants as masters. My novels are merely entertaining persuasions to get the people to think in other categories."
With his long lists of absurd trivia and "mania for absolute details", Condon was, along with Ian Fleming, one of the early exemplars of those called by Pete Hamill in a New York Times review, "the practitioners of what might be called the New Novelism... Condon applies a dense web of facts to fiction.... There might really be two kinds of fiction: the fiction of sensibility and the fiction of information... As a practitioner of the fiction of information, no one else comes close to him."[8]
Quirks and characteristics
Condon attacked his targets wholeheartedly but with a uniquely original style and wit that made almost any paragraph from one of his books instantly recognizable. Reviewing one of his works in the International Herald Tribune, the well-known playwright George Axelrod (The Seven-Year Itch, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter), who had collaborated with Condon on the screenplay for the film adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate, wrote:
"The arrival of a new novel by Richard Condon is like an invitation to a party.... the sheer gusto of the prose, the madness of his similes, the lunacy of his metaphors, his infectious, almost child-like joy in composing complex sentences that go bang at the end in the manner of exploding cigars is both exhilarating and as exhausting as any good party ought to be."
Metaphors and similes
From his 1975 novel, Money Is Love, comes a fine example of the "lunacy of his metaphors": "Mason took in enough cannabis smoke to allow a Lipan Apache manipulating a blanket over it to transmit the complete works of Tennyson." [9] The Manchurian Candidate offers:
"The effects of the narcotics, techniques, and suggestions... achieved a result that approximated the impact an entire twenty-five-cent jar of F. W. Woolworth vanishing cream might have on vanishing an aircraft carrier of the Forrestal class when rubbed into the armor plate."[10]
Lists and trivia
Condon was also enamored of long lists of detailed trivia that, while at least marginally pertinent to the subject at hand, are almost always an exercise in gleeful exaggeration and joyful spirits. In An Infinity of Mirrors, for instance, those in attendance of the funeral of a famous French actor and notable lover are delineated as:
Seven ballerinas of an amazing spectrum of ages were at graveside. Actresses of films, opera, music halls, the theatre, radio, carnivals, circuses, pantomimes, and lewd exhibitions mourned in the front line. There were also society leaders, lady scientists, women politicians, mannequins, couturières, Salvation Army lassies, all but one of his wives, a lady wrestler, a lady matador, twenty-three lady painters, four lady sculptors, a car-wash attendant, shopgirls, shoplifters, shoppers, and the shopped; a zoo assistant, two choir girls, a Métro attendant from the terminal at the Bois de Vincennes, four beauty-contest winners, a chambermaid; the mothers of children, the mothers of men, the grandmothers of children and the grandmothers of men; and the general less specialized, female public-at-large which had come from eleven European countries, women perhaps whom he had only pinched or kissed absent-mindedly while passing through his busy life. They attended twenty-eight hundred and seventy strong, plus eleven male friends of the deceased.[11]
Writing about The Whisper of the Axe in the daily book review column of Friday, May 21, 1976, in the New York Times, Richard R. Lingeman praised the book in particular and Condon in general for his "extravagance of invention unique with him." [12]
Not everyone was as exhilarated by Condon's antics, however. In a long Times Sunday review just two days after Lingeman's, Roger Sale excoriated Condon as a writer of "how-to books" in general, this book in particular, and Condon's habit of using lists: "A lot of it is done with numbers abritrarily chosen to falsely simulate precision." [13]
Real-life names in his books
All of Condon's books have, to an unknown degree, the names of real people in them as characters, generally very minor or peripheral. The most common, which appears in all of his books, is some variation of Franklin M. Heller. Among them are F.M. Heller, Frank Heller, Franz Heller, Marxie Heller, and F. Marx Heller. The real-life Heller was apparently a television director in New York City in the 1950s, '60s, and 70s, who initially lived on Long Island and then moved to a house on Rockrimmon Road in Stamford, Connecticut.[14] Beginning with Mile High in 1969, mentions of a Rockrimmon Road or Rockrimmon House also began to appear regularly in the novels. Late in life Heller grew a thick white beard and became a devotee of needlework—both traits that the fictional Hellers shared, sometimes to ludicrous effect, as when a battle-hardened Admiral Heller is depicted issuing orders while absorbed in needlework. The real-life Heller made one needlework depiction of the manor house in Ireland in which Condon was living at the time. In Prizzi's Honor, Marxie Heller is a mobster and murder victim; in Prizzi's Family, Franklin Heller is the mayor of New York City; in Prizzi's Glory, the Heller Administration is mentioned, implying that he is the president of the United States.
Condon was a great friend of actor Allan Melvin, having written a nightclub act for him. Condon later became a publicist for The Phil Silvers Show ("Sgt. Bilko"), on which Melvin played Cpl. Henshaw. Melvin's name shows up in several Condon books, most prominently as hitman Al (the Plumber) Melvini in "Prizzi's Honor" (a play on Melvin's "Al the Plumber" character in Liquid-Plumr commercials.) In The Manchurian Candidate, with the exception of Marco, Shaw and Mavole, all of Marco's platoon members are named for the cast/crew of "Bilko": (Nat) Hiken, (Maurice) Gosfield, (Jimmy) Little, (Phil) Silvers, (Allan) Melvin, (Mickey) Freeman and (Harvey) Lembeck.
In Prizzi's Honor, a New York City policeman named McCarry is mentioned once; the political thriller writer Charles McCarry was a friend of Condon's and, as a former operative of the C.I.A., was a occasional source of expertise in the field of espionage for Condon.
In a number of books a character named Keifetz appears, named apparently for Norman Keifetz, a New York City author who wrote a novel about a major league baseball player called The Sensation—that novel was dedicated to Condon.
A.H. Weiler, a film critic for the New York Times, was another friend of Condon's who made several fictional appearances, usually as Abraham Weiler but sometimes as a Dr. Abe Weiler.
In The Oldest Confession, a character has lunch in a Paris bistro and briefly meets two people playing chess at the bar, "Buchwald and Nolan, newspaper and airline peons respectively". Buchwald is certainly Art Buchwald, the celebrated newspaper columnist and humorist, who, at the time of the book's publication, was still working for The International Herald-Tribune, which was published in Paris, where Condon had also lived during the 1950s. The identity of Nolan, however, remains a mystery.[15]
Career in films
For many years a Hollywood publicity man for Walt Disney and other studios, Condon took up writing relatively late in life and his first novel, The Oldest Confession, was not published until he was 43. The demands of his career with United Artists—promoting dreadful movies such as The Pride and the Passion and A King and Four Queens—led to a series of bleeding ulcers and a determination to do something else.
His next book, The Manchurian Candidate, which combined all the elements that defined his works for the next 30 years—nefarious conspiracies, satire, black humor, outrage at political and financial corruption in the American scene, breath-taking elements from thrillers and spy fiction, horrific and grotesque violence, and an obsession with the minutiae of food, drink, and fast living—quickly made him, for a few years at least, the center of a cult devoted to his works. As he quickly produced more and more books with the same central themes, however, his cult following fell away and his critical reputation diminished. But over the next three decades Condon continued to pull occasional surprises from his literary hat with books such as Mile High, Winter Kills, and the first of the Prizzi books, Prizzi's Honor, that returned him to favor, both with the critics and the book-buying public.
Of his numerous books that were turned into Hollywood movies, The Manchurian Candidate was filmed twice. The first version, in 1962, which starred Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, followed the book with great fidelity, and is now generally recognized as one of the greatest films of all time. At the time, however, because of its perceived parallels with the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, it was quickly removed from circulation and it was not until its re-release in 1998 that it began to garner a general but belated acclaim. Janet Maslin, writing in 1996 in The New York Times, said that it was "arguably the most chilling piece of cold war paranoia ever committed to film, yet by now it has developed a kind of innocence." [16]
The Keener's Manual
Beginning with his first book, The Oldest Confession, Condon frequently prefaced his novels with excerpts of verse from a so-called Keener's Manual; these epigraphs foreshadowed the theme of the book or, in several instances, gave the book its title. The Keener's Manual, however, was a fictional invention by Condon and does not actually exist. A "keen" is a "lamentation for the dead uttered in a loud wailing voice or sometimes in a wordless cry" [17] and a "keener" is a professional mourner, usually a woman in Ireland, who "utters the keen... at a wake or funeral." [18]
Five of Condon's first six books derived their titles the fictional manual, the only exception being his most famous book, The Manchurian Candidate. The epigraph in The Manchurian Candidate, however, "I am you and you are me /and what have we done to each other?" is a recurring theme in earlier Condon's books: in various forms it also appears as dialog in both The Oldest Confession and Some Angry Angel. Among other epigraphs, the last line of "The riches I bring you /Crowding and shoving, /Are the envy of princes: /A talent for loving." is the title of Condon's fourth novel. His fifth and sixth novels, An Infinity of Mirrors and Any God Will Do, also derive their titles from excerpts of the manual.
Years later, Condon's 1988 novel Prizzi's Glory also had an epigraph from the manual, the first one in at least a dozen books.
Plagiarism charge
In 1998 a California software engineer noticed several paragraphs in The Manchurian Candidate that appeared nearly identical to portions of the celebrated 1934 novel I, Claudius by the English writer Robert Graves. She wrote about the apparent plagiarism on her website but her discovery went unnoticed by most of the world until Adair Lara, a longtime San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, wrote a lengthy article about the accusation in 2003. [19] Reprinting the paragraphs in question, she also solicited the opinion of a British "forensic linguist", who concluded that Condon had unquestionably plagiarized at least two paragraphs of Graves's work. By this time, however, more than seven years had passed since Condon's death and Lara's article also failed to generate any literary interest outside the Chronicle.
Curiously enough, in Some Angry Angel, the book that followed The Manchurian Candidate, Condon makes a direct reference to Graves. In a long, convoluted passage on page 25 Condon reflects on "mistresses" and their apparently peripheral relationship, at least to the reader, to Graves's writings about "Major Male" Deities and "Major Female" Deities. As Angel was published only a year after Candidate, there is no question, therefore, about Condon's familiarity with the works of Robert Graves.[20]
Works—all novels except as noted
- The Oldest Confession, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1958, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-8662; Longman, London, 1959, as The Happy Thieves
- The Manchurian Candidate, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1959, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-8533
- Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1960, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-8826
- A Talent for Loving; or, The Great Cowboy Race, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1961, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:61-10467
- An Infinity of Mirrors, Random House, New York, 1964, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-17935
- Any God Will Do, Random House, New York, 1964, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-21462
- The Ecstasy Business, The Dial Press, New York, 1967, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-14467
- Mile High, The Dial Press, New York, 1969, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-80497
- The Vertical Smile, The Dial Press, New York, 1971, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 978-0803796133
- Arigato (1972)
- The Mexican Stove (1973)—cookbook co-written with his daughter Wendy Bennett
- And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: or, The Art of Emigrating, The Dial Press, New York, 1973, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: PS3553.0487z5—memoir
- Winter Kills, The Dial Press, New York, 1974, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: PZ4.C746 Wi PS3553.O487
- The Star-Spangled Crunch (1974)
- Money Is Love (1975)
- The Whisper of the Axe (1976)
- The Abandoned Woman (1977)
- Death of a Politician (1978)
- Bandicoot (1979)
- The Entwining (1981)
- Prizzi's Honor (1982)
- A Trembling upon Rome (1983)
- Prizzi's Family (1986)
- Prizzi's Glory (1988)
- Emperor of America, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1990, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: PS3553.O487 E47 1990
- The Final Addiction (1991)
- The Venerable Bead (1992)
- Prizzi's Money (1993)
Films adapted from Condon novels
- The Happy Thieves, from The Oldest Confession, 1962
- Winter Kills (film), 1979
- Prizzi's Honor (film), 1985
References
- ↑ Locus, The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, from their May, 1996, issue #424, obituary of Condon, exact page unknown
- ↑ Mile High, The Dial Press, New York, 1969, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-80497, page 156
- ↑ The New York Times, Sunday, August 17, 2008, Sunday Opinion, "The Candidate We Still Don't Know" at [1]
- ↑ Time magazine, "Cheese", March 4, 1971, at [2]
- ↑ The New York Times, Wednesday, April 10, 1996, Obituaries, "Richard Condon, Political Novelist, Dies at 81; Wrote 'Manchurian Candidate' and 'Prizzi'" at [3]
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Who's Who in Spy Fiction, Donald McCormick, Sphere Books Ltd., London, 1977, page 64
- ↑ "For Eddie West, power was all that mattered," by Pete Hamill, The New York Times, August 31, 1969, at
- ↑ Time Magazine, "Liederkranz", a book review by John Skow, June 2, 1975
- ↑ The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon, paperback edition, Signet, New York, November, 1962, fifth printing, page 261
- ↑ An Infinity of Mirrors, by Richard Condon, paperback edition, Fawcett Crest, New York, September, 1965, page 36
- ↑ "A Thriller of the Condon Class", by Richard R. Lingeman, The New York Times, May 21, 1976, at [4]
- ↑ Roger Sale, May 23, 1976, in The New York Times, at [5]
- ↑ Remembrance of Frank Heller," by Ira Skutch, at
- ↑ The Oldest Confession, page 119
- ↑ The New York Times, Wednesday, April 10, 1996, Obituaries, "Richard Condon, Political Novelist, Dies at 81; Wrote 'Manchurian Candidate' and 'Prizzi'" at [6]
- ↑ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, Merriam-Webster, Inc., Springfield, Massachusetts, 2004, ISBN 0-87779-807-9
- ↑ Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged, G. & C. Merriam Co., Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1943
- ↑ "Has a local software engineer unmasked 'The Manchurian Candidate'? Menlo Park woman says author Richard Condon plagiarized", by Adair Lara, in the San Francisco Chronicle, October 4, 2003; the entire article can be read at [7]
- ↑ Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1960, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-8826, page 25