The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy (Proprietary)

By: Nile Southern

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Synopsis: This unbelievable, “thoroughly enjoyable” story shocked the censors and (of course) went on to worldwide notoriety (The New York Times). In the early fall of 1958, the already-notorious Olympia Press in Paris published a novel entitled Candy—an erotic, Rabelaisian satire loosely based on Voltaire’s Candide written by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg under the pseudonym Maxwell Kenton. The novel was banned by French censors, reissued by Olympia’s intrepid publisher under the title Lollipop, re-banned, and again reissued. It became one of the most talked-about novels of the 1960s, selling millions of copies in America alone and spawning a Hollywood movie. Here, the hilarious, rebellious, sometimes tragic story of Candy’s public career is recounted in full, from the book’s humble beginnings in late 1950s Paris, through the authors’ wily, often self-destructive business dealings with their equally wily French publisher, to its chaotic and controversial publication in the United States. “In a magnificent epistolary style” The Candy Men follows Candy’s underground-to-mainstream success with unblinking scrutiny on the details, including the legal shenanigans that surrounded it, the blatant piracy that plagued it, and the star-studded cast that helped make it into one of the worst movies ever made (Publishers Weekly).