The Keener's Manual
The Keener's Manual is an imaginary book created by the 20th-century American political novelist Richard Condon. From it Condon used quotations or epigraphs, generally in verse, to either illustrate the theme of his novels, or, in a large number of cases, as the source of the title, in particular five of his first six books: The Oldest Confession, Some Angry Angel, A Talent for Loving, An Infinity of Mirrors, and Any God Will Do. Only his second, and most famous novel, The Manchurian Candidate, derived its title elsewhere.[1] A number of his later books also reference it for epigraphs, without, however, using any of its verse as a source for titles.
A "keen" is a "lamentation for the dead uttered in a loud wailing voice or sometimes in a wordless cry" [2] and a "keener" is a professional mourner, usually a woman in Ireland, who "utters the keen... at a wake or funeral." [3]
The Oldest Confession
The epigraph to Condon's first novel, which appears on the title page of the first American hardback edition, reads in its entirety:[4]
The Oldest Confession
Is one of Need,
Half the need Love,
The other half Greed
"I am you and you are me and what can we do for the salvation of each other?"
The Manchurian Candidate
yyy
Some Angry Angel
In Condon's third novel, published in 1960, the following verse is found in two places: as an epigraph on a blank page five pages after the title page and two pages before the beginning of the text; and, on page 275, as the closing words of the book. The first quotation is attributed to The Keener's Manual but not the second.[5]
- Some angry angel,
- Bleared by Bach and too inbred,
- Climbed out of bed,
- And, glancing downward,
- Threw a rock
- Which struck an earthbound peacock's head.
- The peacock fell.
- The peacock's yell,
- Outraged by such treason,
- Cried out to know why it,
- Out of billions,
- Should be hit,
- And instantly invented a reason.
- Some angry angel,
References
- ↑ For a website about "The Keener's Manual", see http://tegularius.org/keener.html
- ↑ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, Merriam-Webster, Inc., Springfield, Massachusetts, 2004, ISBN 0-87779-807-9
- ↑ Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged, G. & C. Merriam Co., Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1943
- ↑ The Oldest Confession, Richard Condon, first American hardback, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., New York, 1958 Library of Congress Card Number 58-8662. A 1965 British paperback edition (The Oldest Confession, Richard Condon, paperback edition, Four Square, London, 1965), which includes four paragraphs of text on the final page that are not in the American hardback edition, does not quote this epigraph anywhere, thereby making the title meaningless to the reader
- ↑ In italics in the book. Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1960, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-8826