Banned upon its initial publication, the now-classic Candy is a romp of a story about the impossibly sweet Candy Christian, a wide-eyed, luscious, all-American girl. Candy –– a satire of Voltaire’s Candide –– chronicles her adventures with mystics, sexual analysts, and everyone she meets when she sets out to experience the world.
Candy
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Sex in America, after [Candy], will never be the same.” —Life
“Candy proved that even a satire on sex could be sexy.” —Playboy
“Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.” —William Styron
“Terry Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation.” —Gore Vidal
--This text refers to the
Kindle Edition
edition.
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More About the Author
Terry Southern (1924-1995) was an American author and screenwriter. His novels--including the bestselling cult classics Candy (1958) and The Magic Christian (1959)--established Southern as a literary and pop culture icon. He was also nominated for Academy Awards for his screenplays of Dr. Strangelove (written with Stanley Kubrick and Peter George) and Easy Rider (written with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper). His other books include Flash and Filigree (1958), Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes (1967), Blue Movie (1970), and Texas Summer (1991). In later years, he wrote for Saturday Night Live and lectured on screenwriting at New York University and Columbia University.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 48 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Southern's tour-de-force follows the innocent, beautiful
Candy Christian as she runs sexually afoul of a whole bunch
of scheming, horny men. Since she is pure and giving, she
wants to please them, but gee whiz! Are they ever strange!
Candy Christian as she runs sexually afoul of a whole bunch
of scheming, horny men. Since she is pure and giving, she
wants to please them, but gee whiz! Are they ever strange!
"Candy" was banned in the United States in the Fifties and
received its first publication in Paris. Southern and Mason
Hoffenburg, an American poet, admitted that they had written
the book primarily to make money, since churn-'em-up
pornography was what Olympia Press chef Maurice Girodias was
paying for. Of course, the book became so much more than a
cutesy best-seller: it was the satire of the century, throwing
wide-eyed, white-skinned Miss America into a den of the
great bugaboos of the time (including a Jewish doctor, a
hunchback, and Daddy!). Read it till its thunderous and
pulsating conclusion.
20 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having read Candide first, reading Candy was purely accidental, a fluke, or perhaps a dare, but part way into the book I recognized its inspiration, and enjoyed it immensely from then on. It is truly hysterical, as was the original Voltaire. Candy, however, includes snippets of ideas from other Classics: read it for yourself to see if you can guess each chapter's parent story. I have enrolled in a course that requires the reading of Candide - I am recommending Candy to the instructor who has never read it!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
SILLY, CAMPY AND BY TODAY'S STANDARDS QUITE TAME
Saw it when I was a teen and my date had me leave before it was over. Campy movie, great music for the era. Why such big Hollywood names took rolls in the movie is befuddling.
Published 21 days ago by L. COLBURN
4.0 out of 5 stars
Yes
Read this in college and again recently. Still wicked, and who can forget that last page. A satire that is as revevant now as it was when first published
Published 2 months ago by Michael J. Batzer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun all over again
I had to get this book as it was the first book on sexuality that I read as a young teen when these kinds of books were very hard to get. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Clinton G. Wax Labs
3.0 out of 5 stars
Of Its Time
The Eisenhower era is something like the American version of the Victorian era. At least in the sense that they were both times noted for their straight-laced sexuality which... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Timothy Haugh
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed, but not bad.
This e-book was far too short to warrant the price of TEN DOLLARS. I read it all in one evening. I realized that this was the edited version, but I never thought they'd actually... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Batman
1.0 out of 5 stars
You don't fool me
There's a section at the end of this ebook that tries to convince the reader that Terry Southern was a satirist and "considered one of the great literary minds of the second half... Read more
Published 17 months ago by A. Woman
2.0 out of 5 stars
What happened to the rest
Unfortunately I did not know there were multiple versions of this book. The one I got was edited - I wish there had been a warning
Published on December 27, 2010 by Axxa
5.0 out of 5 stars
What Parody Should Look Like.
I read this when it first appeared, then again, for only the second time, just recently. It's still frankly hilarious, if not quite as shocking as it was then. Read more
Published on December 2, 2010 by Steven Daedalus
3.0 out of 5 stars
hilarious at times
When this book is funny, it's rolling on the floor funny. But, as seems to be typical with Southern's books, it's uneven. Read more
Published on January 16, 2010 by Caraculiambro
5.0 out of 5 stars
CROSS BETWEEN LOLITA,3 STOOGES, AND HENRY MILLER!
For some of the most outrageous writing and set pieces ever devised, look no further than this bizarre romp through the sexual deliriums of several characters, including the ripe... Read more
Published on November 16, 2006 by S. Henkels
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