Candy - revisiting novelists' sickly sweet 1950s pornographic romp
It's plotless, tacky, borderline desperate, and yet its eponymous heroine's romps - from one horny, scheming devil to the next - are never dull
by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg
Olympia Press
This potboiler's title signals the saccharine naivety and sensuality embodied in its hapless heroine who becomes involved in all kinds of lewdly ridiculous exploits.
The biggest joke is that critics treated the tale of sickly sweet Candy Christian as much more than comic confection.
"One guy wrote a review about how Candy was a satire on Candide. So right away I went back and reread Voltaire to see if he was right," co-author Mason Hoffenberg told Playboy. "That's what happens. It's as if you vomit in the gutter, and everybody starts saying it's the greatest new art form, so you go back to see it, and, by God, you have to agree."
Candy becomes embroiled in a string of absurdly sensuous situations, largely driven by a vain desire to help others. Alas, most of the men the hot young airhead meets just want to abuse her. Dodging the advances of her randy philosophy teacher, Professor Mephesto, Candy heads to her father's house, where she plans to let the family gardener deflower her.