The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy [Hardcover]

Nile Southern (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 2004

A Rabelaisian satire loosely based on Voltaire's Candide, Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg's Candy became one of the most famous novels of the tumultuous 1960's. Detailing its humble beginnings in Paris through its agonizing three-year writing gestation (often on paper napkins, lost or destroyed) and the authors' wily business dealings first with French-based publisher Maurice Girodias, then Putnam is America, this book follows with unblinking scrutiny Candy's underground (then mainstream) success, its blatant piracy, its legal shenanigans, and its all-star movie flop. Replete with deceptions and self-deceptions, midnight dope runs, and general pandemonium, THE CANDY MEN is as much fun to read as the original novel itself. And far more instructive.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the spirit of VH1’s Behind the Music comes this revealing behind-the-scenes look at the making, breaking, remaking, pirating, filming and legal wrangling of the ‘60s cult phenomenon Candy. An erotic satire vaguely inspired by Voltaire’s Candide and penned under the name Maxwell Kenton (the nom de plume of its ex-pat coauthors, Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg), Candy was first published in 1958 by the notorious French publisher Maurice Giordias. The book was immediately banned, then reissued under the title Lollipop, banned again, then reissued again, sanitized in England and eventually shipped stateside, where thanks to Putnam and a slew of publishing pirates, it leapt to bestsellerdom and was eventually crowned "the world’s most talked about book." Southern’s own son, Nile, has recounted the novel’s bumpy and adventurous journey in a magnificent epistolary style, reprinting the correspondence between Candy’s authors, its publisher and its increasingly complicated web of involved parties. The compilation perfectly captures the "growing misunderstandings, temper tantrums, paranoid fixations, jealousies, dreams and utter despair that each of these men went through as they tried to regain control over their book lost in a miasma of cloudy copyright." (Miasma is an apt term: by the second half of the book the legal fog is so thick that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of who’s suing whom.) Raucous and voyeuristic, this biography of a book offers valuable insight into the Beat scenes of Paris and New York, as well as into the publishing world during an era of shifting attitudes toward censorship. Perhaps most importantly, it also offers a window onto the lives and minds of two wildly creative literary characters: the authors Southern and Hoffenberg themselves.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The late satirist Terry Southern is best known as the screenwriting genius behind Stanley Kubrick's black-comedy masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove. Less well known in contemporary letters is Southern's friend and lifelong correspondent, Mason Hoffenberg, like Southern a product of the 1950s beat movement. In the mid-sixties, the pair jointly wrote Candy, an erotic parody of Voltaire's Candide that became an underground sensation and later a victim of its era's censorship and copyright laws. Southern's son here engagingly recounts the colorful history of the novel's composition and success, from gestation in Parisian and Greenwich Village cafes and pubs to being pirated by other underground publishers to its eventual rendition in an embarrassing film starring, among other luminaries, Marlon Brando and Richard Burton. At times more fascinating and readable than the original novel, the Candy saga constitutes an important chapter in the history of popular culture and a worthy second look at one of the now largely forgotten masterpieces of erotic literature. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 408 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1 edition (May 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155970604X
• ISBN-13: 978-1559706049
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #983,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Grief! How Candy Was Born, September 3, 2004

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy (Hardcover)

The Rabelaisian story of Candy Christian was told in the novel Candy and was one of those "dirty" books, like _Portnoy's Complaint_ or _Lolita_ to which it is often compared, that people could read, and let others know they read, without embarrassment. Bursting into American print in the sixties, Candy had a grand, scandalous run on the bestseller list. The book had its share of legal problems because of its ribaldry, but the sixties were a time of sexual openness and the way had been cleared by courts which had already decided that such books as _Lady Chatterly's Lover_ and the _Tropic_ books of Henry Miller could not be prohibited. The real legal problems for Candy were not due to its supposed impropriety, but its proprietary issues. The exceptionally complicated legal determination of ownership of the book, a tussle between its two authors, the original French publisher, and assorted interested bystanders, is told in full detail in _The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy_ (Arcade Publishing) by Nile Southern. The story of the book's genesis and the arguments over ownership (some not completely settled until long after the main characters herein had died) is told in quoted letters and legal documents, and sometimes in personal detail, since the author is the son of one of Candy's authors.

_Candy_ was originally the brainchild of Terry Southern, a young writer who had a healthy interest in attractive and generous girls he met in Paris and Greenwich Village. Southern had started the novel, but had gotten more interested in writing another one, _The Magic Christian_. In 1957, missing his deadlines with his Parisian publisher Maurice Girodias, he began sharing bits of it by letter with his beat pal Mason Hoffenberg, who joined in authorship. The idea of the novel had been sold to Girodias to be part of his DB (Dirty Book) catalogue within the Olympia Press. He specialized in pornography that could be sold to English-speaking tourists. He commissioned _Candy_ as he had many other novels, for a one-time payment of a few hundred dollars, paid in fractions as he received the chapters. Like some of its illustrious Olympia Press predecessors (including _Lolita_, _Candy_, released in 1958, was more than mass-production porn. When it came to republication in America, Girodias wanted his slice of profits. Distrust set in, and even paranoia from Hoffenberg, and a decade of claims, counter-claims, and hurt followed. Southern went into the movies, with some large successes, like co-authorship of _Dr. Strangelove_. He said farewell to much of bohemian life and to his junkie companions. Hoffenberg became obsessed with his fair share of _Candy_, and with the lack of attention to him as coauthor while Southern continued to write and remain in the press. Girodias scratched for anything he could salvage, since his publishing house descended into bankruptcy.

Putnam eventually published in hardcover in 1964, with the peculiar stipulation that it would be freed from obligation to pay the authors if a pirated edition came out. Not one pirated edition, but seven from California alone, came out, some in time to benefit from Putnam's extensive publicity. Pirates used the Olympia edition word-for-word, because it had the cloudy European copyright, and each bragged that they followed the original text. The pirates and Putnam made money, as did the lawyers, but the three principals wound up with a meager $9,000 to divide among themselves, the "bitter and paltry spoils from a dissatisfying war," as Nile Southern says. The book was supposed to be unfilmable, but that has never stopped Hollywood; in 1968, _Candy_ the movie was released, to terrible reviews. Low on actual titillation, it made money, largely due to a cast including Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Walter Matthau, Charles Aznavour, Ringo Starr, and James Coburn. It has since come out on DVD as a kitschy curiosity. The novel was put out in a handsome edition for the Book-of-the-Month Club. So _Candy_ the book lives happily ever after, and remains amusing although far less shocking than when it first came out. The three principals, however, did not live happily, at least in part due to the Candy fights, and all died in relative obscurity. _The Candy Men_ thus turns out to be a sad book with lots of funny stories about how a really funny book came into being. Anyone who values _Candy_ will be fascinated with this complicated biography of the novel.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Arcade Publishing Brings Forth a Behemoth, January 2, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy (Hardcover)

The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy isn't all that rollicking. But it's an important book for those interested in civil liberties. CANDY was the subject of many lawsuits, some of which involved Americans' rights to read what they please. The novel itself is a stinging satire on commercialism, consumer culture, and 1950s obsesssion with sex at the same time as hypocrisy reigned over all. Terry Southern was a pioneer in bringing the satirical impulses of Horace and Catullus into postwar writing with his famous troika of CANDY, THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN, and the screenplay for DR STRANGELOVE, voted by the American Film Institute to be the third funniest film of all time. Southern knew everyone, and his son writes down the names as fast as he can, but some detail is lost. I was curious to read more about how Doris Lessing fit into the pot-smoking crowd of the Left Bank in Paris during the 1950s, but we get her name and little more.

The reader feels sorry for the actress Ewa Aulin, who took the role of Candy and you would have think she'd have been prepared for anything, but it seems from Nile Southern's descriptions she was abused by Marlon Brando and had a nervous breakdown due to this abuse and the producers crassly decided to keep her going by stabilizing her with a pharmacopia of drugs. Unfortunately Nile Southern treats this affair as though it were part of the rollicking story of his dad and Uncle Mason scamming the courts. But it leaves a sour taste in one's mouth.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In the end, it's about great writing, July 1, 2004

By 

Gordon J. Whiting (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy (Hardcover)

The Candy Men is a privileged look inside the creative engines and marketplace forces that shape a culture. Here we have two writers, talented beyond anyone's estimation, crafting, polishing and worrying up a gem of modern literature, for which they were to be paid $300. In fact they apparently did do it for the money, but could not find it within themselves to hand in a quickie and forget about it. Far from being an accidental work of Genius, like a wacky novelty song that tops the charts, it turns out that Candy was an intentional reach for something far more than a mindless dirty story. That it succeeded as social commentary and a landmark in the vanquishing of censorship laws, not to mention being a smash for its various publishers (it is, still, a VERY FUNNY book) is a testament to the spot-on cultural acuity and careful artistry of authors Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg. What Nile Southern brings us in The Candy Men is nothing less than the real-life drama of legendary scenes like Paris and Greenwich Village in the fifties, London and L.A. in the sixties, fame, money, drugs, marriage, divorce, writer's block, movie deals, unscrupulous double- and triple-dealing, and a forever youthful All-American sweetheart named Candy whose heart (and other parts) will not deny a soul in need. If you love books and care about the process of writing and publishing, do not miss The Candy Men by Nile Southern.