Literary Birthday – 18 March – Richard Condon

Richard Condon was born 18 March 1915, and died 9 April 1996.

Richard Condon Quotes

1. Writers are too self-centred to be lonely.
2. I’m a man of the marketplace as well as an artist. I’m a pawnbroker of myth.
3. I think the most important part of storytelling is tension. It’s the constant tension of suspense that in a sense mirrors life, because nobody knows what’s going to happen three hours from now.
4. Amateur psychiatric prognosis can be fascinating when there is absolutely nothing else to do.
5. Although the paranoiacs make the great leaders, it is the resenters who make their best instruments because the resenters, those men with cancer of the psyche, make the great assassins.
6. The human comedy begins with a vertical smile.
7. What is art is not likely to be decided for decades or longer after the work has been produced and then is often redecided so we must not think badly if we regard literature as entertainment rather than as transcendent enlightenment.

Richard Condon was a prolific and popular American political novelist. His satiric works were generally presented in the form of thrillers or semi-thrillers, including Prizzi’s Honor and The Manchurian Candidate. ‘His plots often have elements of classical tragedy, with protagonists whose pride leads them to a place to destroy what they love.’ (via) His books were written in distinctive style, with a fast pace, outrage, and humour, while focusing on monetary greed and political corruption. George Axelrod described his style like this: “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.” Six of his novels have been adapted for film.

Source for image: Goodreads
Source for quotes: A-Z

by Amanda Patterson

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