Any God Will Do

The only notable instance is that of a haughty French sommelier who shoots himself at an aristocratic dinner party when he discovers that an American guest is indeed correct in asserting a great white Burgundy can accompany young spring lamb.

In the past, Condon cultists have been treated to comic narrative leaps performed with the agility of a Macedonian goat, and to sly surrealistic glimpses into the lives of Oedipal wrecks and decent drudges who turn up naked at the Last Judgment.

I hear echoes of Friedrich Durrenmatt, Max Frisch, und so weiter-- and the theme, I take it, is the loss of identity by modern man.

[3] Eight years later Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, the regular book reviewer of the Times, began a long review of Condon's latest novel with a backward look at Any God Will Do: I gave up bothering with Richard Condon's books about five novels ago when in Any God Will Do he led me all the way through his snobbish hero's search for royal forebears, only to reveal at the end that said hero was actually the offspring of dwarfs.

It seemed to me that Mr. Condon was making his point through overkill, just as he had one in his previous novel, An Infinity of Mirrors, a one-dimensional attempt to exploit our revulsion with Nazism.

"[6]The novel offers several fine examples of the traits and stylistic tricks that are typical of Condon's work, among them, as the playwright George Axelrod once put it, "the madness of his similies, the lunacy of his metaphors".

On reaching the summit, she greatly cheered a young watercolorist painting in the garrett directly above them by celebrating the victorious ascent with outcries as exultant as those of a Cunard liner.