Word: condoning
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...TALENT FOR LOVING (267 pp.)- Richard Condon-McGraw-Hill...
Disciples are the undoing of holy men, and so it is with Richard Condon, a talented and satirical fantast whose fiercely proselytizing followers regard him as the fifth hoarse man of the Apocalypse. A Condon novel has the sound and shape of a bagful of cats. In The Oldest Confession, The Manchurian Candidate and Some Angry Angel, Condon garnered fans with accounts, written in messianic exasperation, of criminal endeavor, fate's falling cornices, widespread venality, the search for truth, Chinese torture practices, and the love of good women. The sort of nuance that drives his fans loopy with admiration...
...Condon's latest morality, a Western, is written with calculation, not exasperation. It is not hard to imagine the author fretfully asking himself, on a dry day, what would be a good, juicy Condon touch. He offers several: a skirt-chasing captain in Cortes' army, for instance, writes a diary of his conquests and amuses himself by alleging it to be the confessions of the god Quetzalcoatl. Outraged Aztecs set upon the blasphemer and his descendants the curse of undying lust. Telling of it, one weary descendant, a rancher who at 67 requires the constant attention...
...strike was illegal under New York State's never-used Condon-Wadlin Act, which outlaws strikes by public employees on pain of dismissal. But School Superintendent John J. Theobald did not invoke the law, instead suspended the strikers. Then Mayor Robert F. Wagner called in three top labor leaders, including the Garment Workers' Dave Dubinsky, to "mediate." Said one: "We pledge to the families of New York City that there will be no recurrence...
...Surgeons." Actually, as noted, the group consisted of three doctors, a dentist, and five businessmen and professionals--all from Weston. They play mostly for themselves ("Our wives don't lot us away too much"), but appear in public on select occasions ("There has to be a little booze"). Since Condon's moved to the East Side and went respectable--they don't serve you under eighteen any more--this was your reviewer's first encounter with hot jazz. And it was refreshing...