Hardly anything approaching spy fiction appeared in America until the 1940s and in any numbers until the 1960s, perhaps, as some suggest, because of the nature of American democracy or a foreign policy tending towards isolationism. The spy genre, as Clive Bloom terms it in Spy Thrillers, is "the genre tied to international political and social tensions," responding "to a need to represent covert activity by state organizations," via works dealing with the questions of espionage at home and abroad. The Manchurian Candidate, written by Richard Condon (1915-1996) and published in 1959, is an unusual work for its time, being what might be generically termed spy fiction. Its characterization of the lone insane gunman would take on iconic meaning, but its cynical representation of the American political machine and its increasing connection with the media was also something to which the public could relate. As a novel and film it was one of the earliest direct attacks on the nature of McCarthyism, as well as one of the first successful indigenous spy novels in America. Yet this status is not just a mark of good timing. Its limited release in the wake of Kennedy's death and its somewhat prophetic storyline has helped the work gain cult status. Kennedy, The Manchurian Candidate outlines the assassination of the United States president. A highly successful, popular novel written in the late 1950s and brought to the screen in the early 1960s shortly before the death of John F.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |