An unexpected friendship? Was to me. And most/all? of the Plisters, I suggest

[Mark Kohut]

+ ... "DEAR TOM GUINZBURG WHEREVER YOU ARE, I THOUGHT YOU WOULD LIKE TO
KNOW I'M NUMBER EIGHT AND MY FRIEND FREDDIE IS NUMBER TWO."/ Pynchon was
referring to the fact that Frederick Forsyth's second thriller, THE
ODESSA FILE, was No. 2 on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list and
GRAVITY'S RAINBOW was No. 8 ... +

https://books.google.de/books?id=btgXCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT127&lpg=PT127&dq=frederick+forsyth+pynchon&source=bl&ots=XzztUaCr-x&sig=ACfU3U2w-d_zdetjCnDUBZyOPsvwhe1IvA&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB9fPp0ZTnAhVS4aQKHZaLBZQQ6AEwAnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=frederick%20forsyth%20pynchon&f=fals
<https://books.google.de/books?id=btgXCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT127&lpg=PT127&dq=frederick+forsyth+pynchon&source=bl&ots=XzztUaCr-x&sig=ACfU3U2w-d_zdetjCnDUBZyOPsvwhe1IvA&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB9fPp0ZTnAhVS4aQKHZaLBZQQ6AEwAnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=frederick%20forsyth%20pynchon&f=false>
e

One might infer that the friendship began around the time of Freddie's
first book, a runaway bestseller,* The Day of the Jackal.* 1971 His
publisher was
 Viking. Pynchon's publisher..

*“The Day of the Jackal makes such comparable books such as The Manchurian
Candidate and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold seem like Hardy Boy
mysteries.”—The New York Times    ( memory or recreated one: made me want
to read it---but I didn't) *

Such a quote *would *appeal to TRP. We know he has read Le Carre and liked
him without reservations of 'genre'. We also seem to know that he often,
through his agent, Ms Donadio and other industry insiders, got new books to
read before they were published*. Catch--22* seems almost circumstantially
provable as just one he read before publication.

Then there is the forgotten Richard Condon. of *The Manchurian Candidate. *Once
compared to "satirists" like, O, Thomas Pynchon and some other black
humorists. (Latterly, discredited for some plagiarism, including, someone
showed, passages of MC 'taken' from Graves,* I, Claudius.! *[A post-modern
mixer before the mix times? ] Famous for his* LISTS!*! Pynchon list fans.
Famous for extended metaphors ---"complex sentences that go bang at the
end"...and for
the fiction of information. Condon to Pynchon, like those
lost English writers who did the inferior Hamlets and King Lears before
Shakey?
Wikipedia: "The fiction of information"[edit
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Condon&action=edit&section=4>
]

Condon's works are difficult to categorize precisely: A 1971 *Time magazine
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_magazine>* review declared that,
"Condon was never a satirist: he was a riot in a satire factory. He raged
at Western civilization and every last one of its works. He decorticated
the Third Reich, cheese fanciers, gossip columnists and the Hollywood star
system with equal and total frenzy." [6]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-6> The headline of
his obituary in *The New York Times* called him a "political novelist",[7]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-NYT-7> but went on
to say that, "Novelist is too limited a word to encompass the world of Mr.
Condon. He was also a visionary, a darkly comic conjurer, a student of
American mythology and a master of conspiracy theories, as vividly
demonstrated in 'The Manchurian Candidate.'"[7]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-NYT-7> Although his
books combined many different elements, including occasional outright
fantasy and science fiction, they were, above all, written to entertain the
general public. He had, however, a genuine disdain, outrage, and even
hatred for many of the mainstream political corruptions that he found so
prevalent in American life. In a 1977 quotation, he said that:[8]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-8>

"...people are being manipulated, exploited, murdered by their servants,
who have convinced these savage, simple-minded populations that they are
their masters, and that it hurts the head, if one thinks. People accept
servants as masters. My novels are merely entertaining persuasions to get
the people to think in other categories."

With his long lists of absurd trivia and "mania for absolute details",
Condon was, along with Ian Fleming
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming>, one of the early exemplars of
those called by Pete Hamill <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hamill> in
a *New York Times* review, "the practitioners of what might be called the
New Novelism... Condon applies a dense web of facts to fiction.... There
might really be two kinds of fiction: the fiction of sensibility and the
fiction of information... As a practitioner of the fiction of information,
no one else comes close to him."[9]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-9>
Quirks and characteristics[edit
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Condon&action=edit&section=5>
]

Condon attacked his targets wholeheartedly but with a uniquely original
style and wit that made almost any paragraph from one of his books
instantly recognizable. Reviewing one of his works in the *International
Herald Tribune*, playwright George Axelrod
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Axelrod> (*The Seven Year Itch
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Year_Itch_(play)>*, *Will Success
Spoil Rock Hunter
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Success_Spoil_Rock_Hunter>*), who had
collaborated with Condon on the screenplay for the film adaptation of *The
Manchurian Candidate*, wrote:

"The arrival of a new novel by Richard Condon is like an invitation to a
party.... the sheer gusto of the prose, the madness of his similes, the
lunacy of his metaphors, his infectious, almost child-like joy in composing
complex sentences that go bang at the end in the manner of exploding cigars
is both exhilarating and as exhausting as any good party ought to be."