Talk:The Oldest Confession

strange, meaningless sentence to put into the article eventually

page 29, discussing "criminality" and what it needs (or means) in terms of the artist: "It is agreed with a social sense removed because what is there to be taken must be taken by the criminal consistent with his inner resources, eliminating envy, a much smaller sin." Gibberish. Maybe some words are missing from this edition. Paperback, A Four Square Book, London, 1965, paperback. First published in HB by Longmans, Green & Company, Ltd, London, 1959. Hayford Peirce 02:30, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

May I say, with admiration, that the heading of this section, with minor tweaking, deserves some form of literary immortality? Not many phrases evoke, simultaneously, images of Finnegans Wake and Superman. :-) Howard C. Berkowitz 03:18, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Hehe. Which Superman? The Neitchian version, or the DC Comics one? Hayford Peirce 04:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Ummm..the fifties TV version..."Strange visitor from another planet, with powers and abilities..."

As far as Nietzsche, you may not know that I was born, apropos of things that do not destroy us, in Newark, New Jersey. That may have something to do with my experience living in Washington DC during the more intense protests, where I learned to love the smell of tear gas in the morning; it cleared the sinuses. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Merde! an edit conflict wiped me out!! I was saying, however, that we didn't get TV in Bangah, Maine, until around 1952-3, so I never saw any of the TV shows, because we then began moving around the country. There were a couple of horrible movies, however. And yes, I imagine that being a Newarkian can prepare anyone for anything! Hayford Peirce 04:25, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

notes for things to put into article

• Sympathetic hero can be careless, even brutal, at least when the outcome is assessed. Bourne locks lawyer into cellar. Hero of Arigato causes many many deaths. Etc.

• All businessmen are crooks by definition and it's no crime to steal from them, or even from others who are friends of yours. The only *really* honest people are those who are openly criminals to begin with.

• "I am you and you are me and what can we do for the salvation of each other?" etc, page #106 -- also in Keener's Manual in Man. Candidate and maybe, if I recall correctly, from other Condon works.

• Mention of names of real-life friends in many of his books. Here "Buchwald" is mentioned on page 89 as "newspaper peon", also "Nolan", airline peon.

• Quotes from book reviews: NYT, Time, maybe Newsweek are available, maybe others

time mag footnote format

<xref>Time magazine, "South Pacific is Back on Broadway... Finally", April 3, 2008, at [1] </ref>

Condon cult?

1. This is different than cargo cult?

I think he makes a passing reference to them in one of his 1970s books.

2. If so, is it headed by the Queen of Diamonds? Howard C. Berkowitz 00:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Given Condon's love for good food, Diamond Jim Brady, I would say. (I meant to write him up for this month's Writarama but did something else instead. Maybe for Feb.) Hayford Peirce 01:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

NYT stuff to put in article

...Victoriano Munoz certainly deserved to die for what he had done in my first novel....The admirable Duchess of Dos Cortes, who murdered him, was very religious, and I was her old diety, poor woman. She implored me for permission to kill him for his most heinous crimes against her, and I had to so rule.

Richard Condon, Endpaper, A Confession of Multiple Homicide, New York Times, November 30, 1975.

________________________________________________

Review in daily Times by Charles Poore, May 1, 1958. Mostly about the plot. Marqués de Villabra. Dos de Mayo, Second of May. "There is a murderous sort of zaniness to Mr. Condon's plot."