Beverly Hills Baroque

THE ECSTASY BUSINESS by Richard Condon. 306 pages. Dial. $5.95.

Hollywood is beyond parody. Almost anything said or written about it, no matter how absurd, somehow, somewhere, some time comes close to the truth. Author Richard Condon, who spent 22 years as a pressagent for Producers Cecil B. DeMille, Sam Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck, et a!., has tried to defy that basic Hollywood tenet by inventing a story so preposterous that it cannot possibly seem real. He has only partly succeeded.

The plot is hallucinogenic, the characters are monstrous, and the style is Beverly Hills baroque. Yet Condon's grotesque farce is often merely the truth as seen in the wobbles of an amusement-park mirror. The book, which drifted past most critics and customers recently without creating much of a stir, is not on a par with the mad master's Manchurian Candidate. But in its own way, it deserves a small place on the shelf that includes Nathanael West and S. J.

Perelman.

Condon's hero is Tynan Bryson, a Welsh movie star--an obvious fiction, since there is no such thing as a Welsh movie star. Tyson has had only one failure in his 46 pictures (a Hungarian director persuaded him to portray Thomas Jefferson as Richard Nixon might have played him). And he has finally achieved his and every other actor's dream: his contract calls for him to receive exactly 100% of the total gross of his next production.

"Non-Ewe." A one-man copulation explosion, Tyson has never gone more than 17 hours without committing adultery. His wife is Actress Caterina Largo, who possesses, among other things, "a behind stuffed with the golden fleece of erotic dreams for the Mediterranean peoples," and shoulders so flawless that they "reminded Swedish men of winter nights in boarding schools, and English women of golden hockey captains." Their director, Albert McCobb, is a grotesque gourmand who is devoted to Roquefort cheese but spurns Danish blue because it is "non-ewe." McCobb may remind some readers of Alfred Hitchcock--just as an actor named Chuck Moses may be reminiscent of Charlton Heston. But the similarity is coincidental; there are no such persons as Alfred Hitchcock and Charlton Heston.

Tyson is at work on his latest and worst film--a tale of New York suitably titled Bronek's Cheer--when he suddenly begins getting threatening messages and attempts are made on his life. Suspense survives for a time amid the farce, then separates like fragments from a grenade. What Condon fans will enjoy are his extravagant prose arias, including the account of a typical McCobb breakfast. For rhapsodic and inventive list making* it is unequaled by anything since the Glass family's medicine cabinet in Franny and Zooey.

The book's dust jacket notes that "most of Condon's other novels have been bought by H*ll*w**d." It is doubtful that The Ecstasy Business will ever see the dark of a movie theater. On the other hand, five years ago, who would have believed R*ch**d B*rt*n and E*iz*b*th T*yl*r?

*Durham bacon cake, caudle, flummery, ale jelly, Rissered haddie, Huntingdon fidget, Bucks bacon badger, star-gazey pie, slapjack, Bedfordshire clanger, Hindle wakes, bockings, jugged rabbit, Somerset rook pie, bog star, jellied eels, Burlington whimsey, pigs' pettitoes, Kingdom of Fife, limpet stovies, dressmaker tripe, Gooseberry Fool.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.