…OR JUST MIGHT BE MISTAKEN FOR DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN POLICY.
The title above is a quote attributed to George S. Kaufman, confirming his commitment to commercial theater, and, I would guess, or perhaps hope, to fucking Mary Astor senseless on Sundays.
The subtitle is what brings us to the subject at hand hereabouts, namely, Richard Condon, a mid twentieth century American novelist well on his way to vanishing into obscurity, to be lost to memory. More’s the pity, believe you me.
A decade ago, when the current and ongoing collapse of Western Civilization was shining and new, I threw up a Facebook post that said, and I quote, I think,
“If Richard Condon were alive today, reality would sue him for plagiarism.”
This got a response from the very few to whom the name meant anything. And in that regard, I have a deep suspicion that most of those familiar with him haven’t read his novels, but were hip to the movie adaptations.
I’ve seen all the adaptations, and read all the novels. Both have great merit, and I am a big fan of the movies, but I cannot recommend the novels enough. They are almost universally batshit, and simultaneously, certainly as history has caught up with the human tragicomedy, all too real and too fucking realistic to be dismissed as simple satire.
I saw THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE at our local third run grindhouse, and dug it—not the least reason because I had serious wood for Leslie Parrish, who’d played Daisy May in the filmed version of Johnny Mercer’s L’IL ABNER.
I found the novel on my aunt’s shelf on a sleepover, and read it, and I was hooked on Condon from word one. The prose was antic, florid and cruel, the literary equivalent of removing a fly’s wings before the bug knew what hit it.
Over the years, I’ve read nearly everything he wrote. I’m sure I missed something. But what I read informed my way of thinking as only a few popular novelists ever did. While it would be easy to dismiss his fiction as cynical, as nihilistic, rather, I think, he was a lifelong skeptic, of the romantic variety.
But what the hell do I know, right?
Before he became a novelist, Condon was an ad man, working in public relations for a number of Hollywood studios. In photographs, he comes off as well fed and sleek, with a wary and quietly judgmental glance, a look almost undercut by his uncanny resemblance to BENTON BATTBARTON, the advertising agency account executive character in the exquisitely rendered and otherwise dreadful exercise in what I hope and pray was serious fuck you money, LITTLE ANNIE FANNY.
Talk about satire closing on Saturday night, if you catch my drift.
In sum, Condon was, to a profound extent, what an actual real life embodiment of Don Draper, with all that flimflammery implied, would likely have been.
In his lifetime, Condon was generally well reviewed in the mainstream and popular press, albeit with, typical of the time, a patter of very slight and slim disdain, making it clear to readers of those reviews that here was a writer of entertaining but marginal trifles, as opposed to work meant to be taken seriously.
This was, of course, a direct consequence of the outrageousness presented in his prose. How could anyone in that time, in those places, in their right minds, imagine that his outlandish and insistently scurrilous depictions of the clergy, of politicians, of criminals—all three often interchangeable social positions, in Condon’s estimation—be anything but broad satire?
Call me crazy, or maybe just easily convinced…but I had no difficulty whatsoever in considering his characterizations of those creeps and assholes occupying rungs higher on the ladder than I as only barely exaggerated versions of the real thing.
WIKIPEDIA points out that the film versions of his novels are thrillers; as if the novels themselves are not thrillers themselves. No less a light than John Huston said, and I paraphrase, that “…You can make a better movie from a Richard Condon novel than anything by Tolstoy.” Or something to that effect.
Condon died in 1996, by which time the engine of obfuscatory bullshit that has become the all too common modern version of bread and circuses was well installed and in place.
Despite this, on an almost daily basis, the reality leaking through the cracks indicated, and continues to confirm, that Condon’s novels, too often mistaken for wild haired and broadly satirical fiction, hewed far closer to reality than any of those critics, or readers for that matter, might have imagined.
Politics, the clergy, the entertainment industrial complex…the old adage, if you can imagine it, it can happen, applies to all the outrageous and transgressive behavior that has come to light as digital living has replaced the flesh and blood experience.
And it seems to me that Richard Condon deserves the credit for smelling the rat first, but like Cassandra, nobody believed him.
Trust me on this.
As ever, I remain,
Howard Victor Chaykin…a Prince.
