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a time amid the farce, then separates like fragments from a grenade. What Condon fans will enjoy are his extravagant prose arias, including the account of a typical McCobb breakfast. For rhapsodic and inventive list making* it is unequaled by anything since the Glass family's medicine cabinet in Franny and Zooey.... Durham bacon cake, caudle, flummery, ale jelly, Rissered haddie, Huntingdon fidget, Bucks bacon badger, star-gazey pie, slapjack, Bedfordshire clanger, Hindle wakes, bockings, jugged rabbit, Somerset rook pie, bog star, jellied eels, Burlington whimsey, pigs' pettitoes, Kingdom of Fife, limpet stovies, dressmaker tripe, Gooseberry Fool.
60:. 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. It does, however, amply illustrate the recurring theme that drives all of Condon's novels: "Money was at the heart of all art, and the thought of it quickened his pulse and cleared his mind."
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311:"The police investigation uncovered a diabolical mechanism which had been attached to the board. It was a launching device used to fly small planes off Fujihawa-type submarines in World War Two. If had not weighed so much—about two forty-six—if he had weighed one hundred and eighty pounds as I do, he would have been propelled approximately one hundred and sixty-three feet up and dropped squarely on the stone roof of the
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Condon's hero is Tynan Bryson, a Welsh movie star—an obvious fiction, since there is no such thing as a Welsh movie star. Tyson has had only one failure in his 46 pictures (a
Hungarian director persuaded him to portray Thomas Jefferson as Richard Nixon might have played him).... Suspense survives for
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Hollywood is beyond parody. Almost anything said or written about it, no matter how absurd, somehow, somewhere, some time comes close to the truth. Author
Richard Condon... has tried to defy that basic Hollywood tenet by inventing a story so preposterous that it cannot possibly seem real. He has only
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Richard Condon, a cum laude graduate of the press agent's table at Lindy's, creates another of his
Chinese-meal novels.... You feel hungry an hour later, but all those sweet and pungent sauces tantalize you right up to the fortune cookie. Break it open after 300 pages of spare ribs and it reads: Look
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The plot is hallucinogenic, the characters are monstrous, and the style is
Beverly Hills baroque. Yet Condon's grotesque farce is often merely the truth as seen in the wobbles of an amusement-park mirror. The book, which drifted past most critics and customers recently without creating much of a
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tinsel beneath. Yet Condon is always the working entertainer. Even with a flop, he follows the Henry James dictum that the novel "amounts to never forgetting, by any lapse, that the thing is under a special obligation to be amusing."
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Unusual for a Condon work, it does not contain innumerable inventive and preposterous similes and metaphors. A few are scattered about the book, such as, "She had a voice like a tuba encased in Orson Welles's stomach."
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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
67:"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
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out for funny
Hollywood novels. The Condon cult knows that he is an earnest man using every weapon from brass knuckles to Sioux pogamoggans against his fictional adversaries. His novels would be merely in the
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128:... by Richard Condon. Faster than a speeding bullet zooms this balled-up potpourri of movie clichés—extended to their limits and beyond by Mr. Condon's fevered imagination.
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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
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Condon does, however, apply his imagination to such fancies as a murder device intended for the hero but inadvertently triggered by his agent:
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gag class except for the fact that he is deadly serious about the pollution of our atmosphere by sham and hypocrisy....
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171:. But in its own way, it deserves a small place on the shelf that includes Nathanael West and S.J. Perelman.
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Given his extensive background in the film industry and early-on established fame, primarily from his 1959
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379:, The Dial Press, New York, 1967, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-14467, page 306 plus one
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47:, and with his tempestuous ex-wife, an Italian film star to whom he has been married three times.
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on a blank page four pages after the title page and two pages before the beginning of the text.
447:, The Dial Press, New York, 1967, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-14467, page 194
459:, The Dial Press, New York, 1967, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-14467, page 25
367:, The Dial Press, New York, 1967, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-14467, page 19
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355:, The Dial Press, New York, 1967, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-14467, page 3
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435:, The Dial Press, New York, 1967, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-14467
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has momentarily forgotten
Hollywood's first law: Scratch the tinsel and find the
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reviews called it a "fictional amusement park", beginning its review by:
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Cover of the first hardback edition, published by The Dial Press in 1967
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The back cover of the first edition, with a portrait of
Richard Condon
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was the seventh book by the
American satirist and political novelist
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A longer review in the Sunday book section was somewhat more mixed:
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magazine, "Books: Beverly Hills
Baroque", March 22, 1968, at
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Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
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158:magazine gave the book a quite favorable review:
56:, it is somewhat surprising to be Condon's first
403:"Hollywood-on-the-Rhine", by Herbert Mitgang,
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325:This article incorporates material from the
213:The verse is found in only one place, as an
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315:, two hundred and ninety feet away."
204:Let us go down to that place of dreams,
207:For a peek at the business of ecstasy.
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388:"Reader's Report", by Martin Levin,
201:For a taste of life and sex to see,
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198:Let us go down to the peep show,
333:", which is licensed under the
63:A biographical afterword says:
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490:Novels by Richard Condon
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53:The Manchurian Candidate
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16:Book by Richard Condon
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331:The Ecstasy Business
169:Manchurian Candidate
126:The Ecstasy Business
31:The Ecstasy Business
405:The New York Times
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104:Critical reception
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327:Citizendium
139:Max Shulman
93:Walt Disney
85:Sam Spiegel
73:Sam Goldwyn
480:1967 books
469:Categories
320:References
287:March 2013
260:Characters
248:March 2013
329:article "
215:epigraph
313:palazzo
95:, and
221:Theme
182:Title
420:Time
339:GFDL
156:Time
148:real
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
