Richard Condon facts for kids

Richard Thomas Condon (born March 18, 1915 – died April 9, 1996) was an American novelist. He wrote exciting stories, often about politics. Even though his books were funny and made fun of things (called satire), they often became thrilling movies.

Condon wrote 26 books. His writing style was special: it was fast-paced, full of strong feelings, and often very funny. He focused a lot on how people wanted money too much and how politicians could be unfair. Condon once said that all his books were about "abuse of power." He wanted people to know how their leaders might not always do what's best for them. Many of his books were very popular, and some were even made into films. He is best known for his 1959 book, The Manchurian Candidate, and later, a series of four books about a New York family called Prizzi.

Condon's stories had complicated plots. He loved including lots of interesting facts and details. He also showed a strong dislike for people in power who misused it. Some of his books, like Mile High (1969), felt like secret histories. His book And Then We Moved to Rossenarra is a funny story about his family moving to Ireland in the 1970s.

Richard Condon's Early Life

Richard Condon was born in New York City. He went to DeWitt Clinton High School.

After serving in the United States Merchant Marine (a group of ships that carry goods), Condon became quite successful in Hollywood. He worked as a publicist (someone who promotes movies), an ad writer, and an agent. In 1957, Condon decided he wanted to write novels. His boss at United Artists, Max E. Youngstein, secretly saved money from Condon's salary. After a year, Youngstein fired him but gave him all the saved money in a Mexican bank account and a key to a house in Mexico. He told Condon to write his book. Condon's second novel, The Manchurian Candidate (1959), was dedicated to Youngstein and became a very successful film.

What Was Condon's Writing Style Like?

It's hard to put Condon's books into just one group. A magazine called Time said in 1971 that Condon wasn't just a writer who made fun of things; he was like a "riot in a satire factory." He was angry at many parts of Western society.

The newspaper The New York Times called him a "political novelist" when he died. But they also said he was much more than that. He was a "visionary" and a "darkly comic conjurer." He studied American stories and was a master of conspiracy theories, which you can see clearly in The Manchurian Candidate. Even though his books mixed many different ideas, including some fantasy and science fiction, they were mostly written to entertain people. He truly disliked the political corruption he saw in American life.

In 1977, Condon explained his view:

• He felt that people were being controlled and hurt by their leaders.
• He thought these leaders had tricked people into believing they were in charge.
• Condon believed that thinking about these things could be hard.
• He wanted his novels to be fun ways to get people to think differently.

Condon was known for including long lists of strange facts and being very detailed. He was one of the first writers to create what some called "the fiction of information." This means he used a lot of facts and details in his stories.

Unique Features of Condon's Books

Condon strongly criticized his targets, but he did it in a very original and clever way. You could often tell a paragraph was from his book right away. Playwright George Axelrod, who worked with Condon on The Manchurian Candidate movie, said that reading a new Condon book was like getting an invitation to a party. He praised Condon's exciting writing, his crazy comparisons, and his almost childlike joy in writing complex sentences that ended with a bang.

Lists and Interesting Facts

Condon loved to include long lists of detailed and often funny facts. These facts were usually related to the story but were also a way for him to show his playful and exaggerated style.

Richard R. Lingeman, a book reviewer for The New York Times, praised Condon's book The Whisper of the Axe in 1976. He said Condon had an "extravagance of invention unique with him."

However, not everyone loved Condon's style. Another reviewer, Roger Sale, criticized Condon for using too many lists and for choosing numbers randomly to make things seem more precise than they were.

Richard Condon's Film Career

For many years, Condon worked as a publicist in Hollywood for studios like Walt Disney. He started writing novels later in life. His first book, The Oldest Confession, was published when he was 43. He wanted to do something different from promoting movies.

His next book, The Manchurian Candidate, had all the things that would define his writing for the next 30 years:

• Secret plans and groups (conspiracies).
• Making fun of things (satire).
• Dark humor.
• Anger at political and money-related corruption in America.
• Exciting parts from thrillers and spy stories.
• A focus on small details about food, drinks, and living a fast life.

This book quickly made him very popular for a few years. As he wrote more books with similar ideas, some of his fans moved on. However, over the next three decades, Condon wrote other books that brought him back into favor with both critics and readers. These included Mile High, Winter Kills, and the first of the Prizzi books, Prizzi's Honor.

Many of Condon's books were made into Hollywood movies. The Manchurian Candidate was even filmed twice! The first movie, made in 1962, starred famous actors like Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury. It followed the book very closely and is now seen as a great look into the feelings of that time. Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times in 1996 that it was "arguably the most chilling piece of cold war paranoia ever committed to film."

Was There a Plagiarism Claim?

In 1998, a software engineer found that some parts of The Manchurian Candidate seemed almost exactly like parts of a famous 1934 novel called I, Claudius by English writer Robert Graves. She wrote about this on her website.

Her discovery wasn't widely known until 2003, when a writer named Adair Lara wrote a long article about it in the San Francisco Chronicle. Lara printed the paragraphs that looked similar. She also asked a British expert who studies language in legal cases (a forensic linguist). This expert said that Condon had definitely copied at least two paragraphs from Graves's work. However, Condon had passed away more than seven years before this article came out, so it didn't cause much interest outside of that newspaper.

In his book Some Angry Angel, which came out just one year after The Manchurian Candidate, Condon directly mentions Robert Graves. This shows that Condon knew about Robert Graves's books.

Selected Books by Richard Condon

• The Oldest Confession, 1958 (also called The Happy Thieves)
• The Manchurian Candidate, 1959
• Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale, 1960
• A Talent for Loving; or, The Great Cowboy Race, 1961 (later made into a film where Condon wrote the script)
• An Infinity of Mirrors, 1964
• Any God Will Do, 1964
• Mile High, 1969
• The Vertical Smile, 1971
• Arigato, 1972
• The Mexican Stove, 1973 (a cookbook he wrote with his daughter Wendy Bennett)
• And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: or, The Art of Emigrating, 1973 (a memoir about his life)
• Winter Kills, 1974
• 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, 1990
• The Venerable Bead, 1992
• Prizzi's Money, 1994

Movies Based on Condon's Novels

• The Happy Thieves, from The Oldest Confession (1961)
• The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
• A Talent for Loving (1969)
• Winter Kills (1979)
• Prizzi's Honor (1985)
• The Manchurian Candidate (2004)