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Title: Candy by Terry Southern, Mason Hoffenberg ISBN: 0-8021-3429-7 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: March, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Clever and disarming satire!
Comment: This is one of the cleverest satires I have read in a long time. In this wickedly funny and provocative novel, Candy chronicles her pursuit of normalcy when she abandons her eccentric family. What follows is a hilarious twist after another as Candy encounters doctors, sexual analysts, yoga gurus and relatives. The sexual implications and content in this novel (too explicit to describe) are thought provoking, funny and disturbing at the same time. It is no surprise that Candy was banned from various countries. Terry Southern writes with irony and unsentimental prose -- a force to be reckoned with. Are you in the bargain for a satirical and dark read? Pick up Candy!
Rating: 4
Summary: Candy-a beautiful and thrilling privilege to read
Comment: This sexually irreverent novel by Terry Southern wouldn't have spawned a 1968 cult movie with Ewa Aulin had it not been for the catalyst that sets things in motion. Candy Christian, a beautiful girl who just happened to be born on Valentine's Day, writes a paper on Contemporary Human Love for her instructor, Professor Mephesto, saying that "to give of oneself--fully--is not merely a duty prescribed by an outmoded superstition, it is a beautiful and thrilling privilege."
And things go really cockeyed from there. A tryst with Manuel, the Mexican gardener, in full application of her paper, leads to the hospitalization of her father, and her voyage into the wide, weird, world. It isn't that she's missing much. Her father's a stodgy conservative businessman, her aunt Livia is a vulgar hussy who uses sexual innuendos as regularly as one blinks. However, her adventures lead her into meeting people who want nothing more than to rip the wrapper off and have a bite of that... candy. Oops! Candy, I mean. Others downright hate her. The poor girl has the best of intentions and doesn't want to rock the boat for the sake of preserving her credo, and hence lets them take advantage of her without knowing that they are.
Written as it was in 1958, I can see how it shocked America and Europe. Dr. Krankeit's assertion that self-gratification is actually healthy is a message to the repressed people of the world: "This mechanism you've contrived to keep your sexual lust a secret from the world, and from you yourself, is causing you more trouble than you realize." It makes sense--keep something bottled or under pressure for too long and KA-BLAM!! Of course, involving another party complicates things, because consent is becomes issue. But is it healthy and okay to look at adult magazines, videos, or computer CD-ROMs? Heck yeah!
Southern's writing is brash, profanely funny, and will cause cause conservatives hairs to stand on end even today, but his choice of words, be they adjectives, nouns, and slang, in describing sexual things is creative to say the least. It's what keeps this book afloat. What also helps Candy is the hapless but lovable title character-face it, there's only one decent character in this book other than her--and I can't help but roll my eyes at her gullibility. But I also feel attached to my heroine too.
Rating: 2
Summary: candy
Comment: Perhaps it was because I have yet to read Voltaire's Candide, but Southern's Candy was completely lost on me. There was enough perversity and bizarreness to keep me reading until the end but I was left feeling that it was a bit incomplete and a bit pointless. Nevertheless, I get the feeling that Southern is a talented writer, and perhaps this just wasn't one of his better works.
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Title: Blue Movie by Terry Southern ISBN: 0802134661 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: July, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Magic Christian by Terry Southern ISBN: 0802134653 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: July, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes by Terry Southern, George Plimpton ISBN: 0806511672 Publisher: Citadel Trade Pub. Date: January, 1990 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title:Candy ASIN: B000059POY Publisher: Anchor Bay Entertainment Pub. Date: 25 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $17.98 |
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Title: Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 by Nile Southern, Josh Alan Friedman ISBN: 0802138942 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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