Book 59: The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate
Richard Condon

Having never seen either of the movie adaptations of this book, I went into it relatively unspoiled, which I think is a good thing because I was permitted to engage in the novel's big reveal precisely as it was intended, just before the heretofore barely implicit became blindly obvious. Because the political implications of the novel hinge on this plot twist, it is difficult to assess the novel on a first reading. For much of the story, I was somewhat bored and confused by different characterizations and rambling paragraphs of exposition that seemed to add little to the story; in retrospect, some of these bits are useful but some are unnecessarily long and come into play far later for minor plot variations. The book is largely boring but speeds up fairly well in the end, achieving a thrilling intensity in its last hundred pages that would serve it well in the previous parts. The book is also hard for someone in my generation to judge, as it feels most at home in the Cold War and must, therefore, take on a vintage feel to the modern reader. Ultimately, it is a decently written but dated story that raises its interesting issues far too late, and with far too little exploration, to make it particularly politically compelling.

The story itself is quite interesting and should pose interesting philosophical and ethical questions: what would happen if an enemy force could manufacture a Medal of Honor winner and use him as an ultimate, almost undetectable weapon? Unfortunately, a lot of the intrigue gets lost and bogged down by a downright unlikeable cast of characters who are almost impossible to relate to and a whole lot harder to care about, until maybe the very end of the book when it is too late for Condon to manufacture sympathy. Though the plot is driven by an original and well-executed idea, it crams far too much of its intrigue into its final, rushed act and fails to sustain interest throughout. The writing itself is passable and the book as a whole simply interesting, to be read and passed quietly into the "read" pile. Those interested in Cold War literature or brainwashing will probably enjoy this book, and anyone cynical about American politics will appreciate the cold and stark portrait of Raymond's mother as the most coldly calculating of political opportunists and the driving force behind an underdeveloped McCarthyist hysteria. There are hints of interest throughout the book, but they are either woefully overplayed or frustratingly underdeveloped. Ultimately, The Manchurian Candidate is consistently vaguely interesting until its final successful act, by which point readers' ambivalence has gone unchecked for so long that it's hard to get wrapped up in the action and the book is reconciled to a place on the shelves of mediocre dated political thrillers.

Grade: B-