"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 Cecile B. De Mille,Sam Goldwyn Samuel Goldwyn (born Szmuel Gelbfisz; yi, שמואל געלבפֿיש; August 27, 1882 (claimed) January 31, 1974), also known as Samuel Goldfish, was a Polish-born American film producer. He was best known for being the founding contributor an ...,Otto Preminger Otto Ludwig Preminger ( , ; 5 December 1905 – 23 April 1986) was an Austrian-American theatre and film director, film producer, and actor. He directed more than 35 feature films in a five-decade career after leaving the theatre. He first gai ...,Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...,Sam Spiegel Samuel P. Spiegel (November 11, 1901December 31, 1985) was an American independent film producer born in the Galician area of Austria-Hungary. Financially responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed motion pictures of the 20th centur ...,Darryl Zanuck Darryl Francis Zanuck (September 5, 1902December 22, 1979) was an American film producer and studio executive; he earlier contributed stories for films starting in the silent era. He played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of ...,Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ..., andHoward Hughes Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business magnate, record-setting pilot, engineer, film producer, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most influential and richest people in th ...."
Critical reception
The first of two ''New York Times'' reviews called it a "fictional amusement park", beginning its review by:It's a bird! It's a plane! No! It's ''The Ecstasy Business''... 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.A longer review in the Sunday book section was somewhat more mixed:
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 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''Time'' magazine gave the book a quite favorable review:Max Shulman Maximilian Shulman (March 14, 1919 – August 28, 1988) was an American writer and humorist best known for his television and short story character Dobie Gillis, as well as for best-selling novels. Biography Early life and career Shulman was b ...gag class except for the fact that he is deadly serious about the pollution of our atmosphere by sham and hypocrisy....
ondonhas momentarily forgotten Hollywood's first law: Scratch the tinsel and find the ''real'' 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."
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 partly succeeded. 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 stir, is not on a par with the mad master's Manchurian Candidate. But in its own way, it deserves a small place on the shelf that includes Nathanael West and S.J. Perelman.
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 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.
Title
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 '' Keener's Manual'' mentioned in many of his earlier novels: ::Let us go down to the peep show, ::For a taste of life and sex to see, ::Let us go down to that place of dreams, ::For a peek at the business of ecstasy. The verse is found in only one place, as an epigraph on a blank page four pages after the title page and two pages before the beginning of the text.Theme
Characters
Typical Condon quirks and characteristics
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." Condon does, however, apply his imagination to such fancies as a murder device intended for the hero but inadvertently triggered by his agent:"The police investigation uncovered a diabolical mechanism which had been attached to theiving Iving may refer to: *Intravenous therapy Intravenous therapy (abbreviated as IV therapy) is a medical technique that administers fluids, medications and nutrients directly into a person's vein. The intravenous route of administration is commonly ...board. It was a launching device used to fly small planes off Fujihawa-type submarines in World War Two. If he agenthad 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 ''palazzo'', two hundred and ninety feet away."''Any God Will Do'', The Dial Press, New York, 1967, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-14467, page 25
References