The Manchurian Candidate | Literary Precedents

The Manchurian Candidate Literary Precedents

Many critics have commented upon The Manchurian Candidate's parallels with contemporary novels such as Norman Mailer's The Deer Park (1955), William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959), and Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), all of which contain paranoid and surrealist components. In the case of The Manchurian Candidate, however, these have been utilized to construct an entertaining thriller rather than a literary exploration of the shadier aspects of American society, and the nature of Condon's subsequent publications indicates that these parallels are matters of coincidence rather than mutual influence.

It has not been as generally recognized that The Manchurian Candidate derives much of its power from its affinities with other novels of psychological possession. The fear of being controlled or even inhabited by alien powers is probably as old as human consciousness itself, and modern man's insatiable curiosity about his psychological make-up has increased awareness...
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