Richard Thomas Condon was an American political novelist. Though his works were satire, they were generally transformed into thrillers or semi-thrillers in other media, such as cinema. All 26 books were written in distinctive Condon style, which combined a fast pace, outrage, and frequent humor while focusing almost obsessively on monetary greed and political corruption. 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." Condon's books were occasionally bestsellers, and a number of his books were made into films; he is primarily remembered for his 1959 The Manchurian Candidate and, many years later, a series of four novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi.
Leslie Aaron Fiedler was an American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work incorporates the application of psychological theories to American literature. Fiedler's best known work is the book Love and Death in the American Novel (1960). A retrospective article on Leslie Fiedler in the New York Times Book Review in 1965 referred to Love and Death in the American Novel as "one of the great, essential books on the American imagination ... an accepted major work." This work views in depth both American literature and character from the time of the American Revolution to the present. From it, there emerges Fiedler's once scandalous—now increasingly accepted—judgement that American literature is incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is pathologically obsessed with death.
Our great novelists, though experts on indignity and assault, on loneliness and terror, tend to avoid treating the passionate encounter of a man and a woman, which we expect at the center of a novel. Indeed, they rather shy away from permitting in their fictions the presence of any full-fledged, mature women, giving us instead monsters of virtue or bitchery, symbols of the rejection or fear of sexuality.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt was an American journalist, editor of the New York Times Book Review, critic, and novelist, based in New York City. He served as senior Daily Book Reviewer from 1969 to 1995.
John Sack was an American literary journalist and war correspondent. He was the only journalist to cover each American war over half a century.
Brothers is a thriller novel by William Goldman. It is the sequel to his 1974 novel Marathon Man and is Goldman's final novel.
Kathryn Harrison is an American author. She has published seven novels, two memoirs, two collections of personal essays, a travelogue, two biographies, and a book of true crime. She reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review. Her personal essays have been included in many anthologies and have appeared in Bookforum, Harper's Magazine, More Magazine, The New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Vogue, Salon, and Nerve.
The Manchurian Candidate is a novel by Richard Condon, first published in 1959. It is a political thriller about the son of a prominent U.S. political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy.
The Keener's Manual is an imaginary book created by the 20th-century American political novelist Richard Condon. From it Condon used quotations or epigraphs, generally in verse, to either illustrate the theme of his novels, or, in a large number of cases, as the source of the title, in particular six of his first seven books: The Oldest Confession, Some Angry Angel, A Talent for Loving, An Infinity of Mirrors, and Any God Will Do. Only his second, and most famous novel, The Manchurian Candidate, derived its title elsewhere. A number of his later books also reference it for epigraphs, without, however, using any of its verse as a source for titles.
The Oldest Confession is a 1958 novel, the first of twenty-five by the American political novelist and satirist Richard Condon. It was published by Appleton-Century-Crofts. The novel is a tragicomedy about the attempted theft of a masterpiece from a museum in Spain. It can be classified as a caper story or caper novel, a subset of crime novels. The book deals with issues of money, greed, ethics and morality. It was adapted into a film retitled The Happy Thieves.
Russell Henry Greenan was an American author with an established readership in the United States and Europe, particularly France. His first book It Happened in Boston? was reprinted in 2003 in the U.S.A. as a 20th Century Rediscovery by Modern Library. His fourth book The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton was made into a motion picture titled The Secret Life of Algernon in 1997.
Mile High was the eighth book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon, first published by Dial Press in 1969. Internationally famous at the time of its publication, primarily because of his 1959 Manchurian Candidate, Condon had begun to lose the respect of critics with the publication of his last few books and the one-time, so-called Condon Cult was mostly a thing of the past. Like his fifth book, An Infinity of Mirrors, Mile High is a consciously ambitious work, primarily concerned with the establishment of Prohibition in the United States, and Condon researched it thoroughly. The first two-thirds of the book, in fact, reads as much like a lively history of New York City gangsterism from the mid-18th century through 1930 as it does a novel.
Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale was Richard Condon's third novel and gave impetus to the growing, though relatively short-lived "Condon cult" of that era. Published in 1960, it is written with all the panache, stylistic tricks, and mannerisms that characterize Condon's works. It was not, however, one of his more typical political thrillers, such as its immediate predecessor, the far better-known The Manchurian Candidate. While Condon is remembered today for a number of more action-oriented books such as Candidate, Winter Kills, and the Prizzi series, Some Angry Angel is largely forgotten.
An Infinity of Mirrors was the fifth and most ambitious book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon. First published by Random House in 1964, it is set in France and Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, as seen through the eyes of a beautiful, rich Parisian Jew and her beloved husband, an old-fashioned Prussian army general. What unfolds is and an almost unrelievedly bleak depiction of the rise of the Nazis and the Third Reich.
The Ecstasy Business was the seventh book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon, first published by The Dial Press in 1967. Told in the third person, it is the broadly comic story of Tynan Bryson, "the greatest film star of his generation", and his torturous relationship with the director Albert McCobb, a blatant caricature of Alfred Hitchcock, and with his tempestuous ex-wife, an Italian film star to whom he has been married three times.
And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: or, The Art of Emigrating is a memoir by American political novelist Richard Condon, published by Dial Press in 1973. A native of New York City whose early career had mostly been that of a press agent for various Hollywood studios, Condon took up writing relatively late in life but then became both prolific and famous; today, he is most remembered for his 1959 political thriller The Manchurian Candidate and for his four later novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi.
Ancient History: A Paraphase is Joseph McElroy's third novel, published in 1971. It presents itself as a hastily written essay/memoir/confession. The character Dom is sometimes described as a fictionalized Norman Mailer.
Prizzi's Honor is a satirical crime novel by Richard Condon published in 1982. It is the first of four novels featuring the Prizzis, a powerful family of Mafiosi in New York City. In all four novels the protagonist is a top member of the family named Charlie Partanna. It was adapted into a successful film of the same name.
Prizzi's Family is a satirical, semi-humorous crime novel by Richard Condon published in 1986. It is the second of four novels featuring the Prizzis, a powerful family of Mafiosi in New York City. In all four novels the main protagonist is a top member of the family named Charley Partanna. It is a prequel to the very successful Prizzi's Honor of 1982, which was also adapted into an award-winning film.
Prizzi's Glory is a satirical, semi-humorous crime novel by Richard Condon published in 1988. It is the third of four novels featuring the Prizzis, a powerful family of Mafiosi in New York City. In all four novels the main protagonist is a top member of the family named Charlie Partanna. The book's events begin in 1986 and continue through the Presidential election of 1992.
Prizzi's Money is a satirical, semi-humorous crime novel by Richard Condon published in 1994. It is the last of four novels featuring the Prizzis, a powerful family of Mafiosi in New York City. It was also the last of 28 books that Condon wrote over a 36-year career. In all four Prizzi novels the main protagonist is a top member of the family named Charley Partanna. In this book, however, which takes place about six or seven years after the events of the first novel, Prizzi's Honor, and at least a decade before those of the third book, Prizzi's Glory, Charley's role is less important than in the three others; although he makes brief appearances in the first half of the book, it is not until the second half that he becomes one of the primary characters.
