Books: Snob’s Folly

ANY GOD WILL DO by Richard Condon. 31 1 pages. Random House. $5.95.

Though Francis Vollmer religiously repeats “I am a banker” 50 times every day, he only begins to get rapid promotions after the bank president has exposed himself on two separate occasions before Francis’ wife. When the bank president commits suicide, Francis is so close to the top that he can hush up the scandal with his left hand while his right hand is slipping $450,000 in crisp bills into manila envelopes destined for a Swiss numbered account.

But banking and money do not really mean that much to Francis. Raised in a Manhattan orphanage with nary a clue to the identity of his parents, he has developed a delusion that he is the unacknowledged child of a British peer, entitled to the Order of the Garter, or perhaps even the illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm and Queen Mary.

While there is meticulous method in Francis Vollmer’s madness, there is not nearly enough madness in the narrative methods of Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate). What the author intends is a black comedy on the peril of an obsessive delusion; what he achieves is a hybrid between bedroom-comedy pink and olive-drab boredom.

Love Games. To Francis the quest for an identity is almost identical with the opening of a fall college term. At 39, he is one of those banal people who believe that life is graded like a test, and that if one does one’s homework, one will pass. He believes that his mythical titled parents are on watch and will claim him as their own once he passes the test of haute Kultur. He becomes a culture grind, slaving ardently at French cooking, memorizing the Almanack de Gotha, and mentally building a pyramid of ancient trivia.

He also studies the lives of the courtesans and acquires a French mistress whose advanced love games are teasingly unscored. The one fact of life Francis cannot face is the birth record his wife ferrets out that shows he is the child of a 21-inch circus dwarf and a lunch-wagon cashier. In a hysterical tizzy, Francis flees to Europe with a fresh mustache and a new passport listing his identity as Francois Hillairet.

Avenging Dwarfs. Haunted by fantasies of an army of avenging dwarfs whose medical corps plans to melt him down to 18 inches, François-Francis lands in a Swiss mental clinic. Released after further plot complications, FranÇois-Francis starts hopping through the titled beds of France and he becomes the erotic talk of Paris. But his mad snobbery causes him to lose the rest of his money and his marbles. By the time the truth is out that dishonesty with oneself is not the best policy, he is past recognizing it.

Despite clever barbs and lucent epigrams (“Respect is the only successful aphrodisiac”), Any God Will Do is not as acidly funny as it keeps promising to be. In the past, Condon cultists have been treated to comic narrative leaps performed with the agility of a Macedonian goat, and to sly surrealistic glimpses into the lives of Oedipal wrecks and decent drudges who turn up naked at the Last Judgment. But in this book much of the elan is gone; it sometimes appears as if Condon is padding to keep from plotting. Besides, he seems to hold his nose in the presence of his desperate snob, and an author’s distaste for his own hero can taint a reader’s pleasure.