Another cliché says that life imitates art, and here too The Manchurian Candidate may seem spot on. The fictional world of The Manchurian Candidate is one in which exaggerated satirical and sexual conceits are mashed up with political reality.
As Condon suggested in the essay published the wake of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, and as his brainwashed characters are forced to experience in the book, in an age of deep anxiety and political subversion by the powers that be it is no longer possible to differentiate between current events and manifestations of our most frightening paranoiac nightmares.
No matter what the outcome of the US Presidential election in November, Richard Condon, at least in literary terms, has won a victory for the apparent germaneness to political discourse of the paranoid conspiracy thriller.
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Whether he wins or loses in November, Donald Trump remains the most likely Manchurian Candidate.
Or does he?
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