The Keener's Manual
The Keener's Manual is an imaginary book created by the 20th-century American political novelist Richard Condon. From it Condon used quotations or epigraphs, generally in verse, to either illustrate the theme of his novels, or, in a large number of cases, as the source of the title, in particular six of his first seven books: The Oldest Confession, Some Angry Angel, A Talent for Loving, An Infinity of Mirrors, and Any God Will Do. Only his second, and most famous novel, The Manchurian Candidate, derived its title elsewhere. A number of his later books also reference it for epigraphs, without, however, using any of its verse as a source for titles. A "keen" is a "lamentation for the dead uttered in a loud wailing voice or sometimes in a wordless cry" and a "keener" is a professional mourner, usually a woman in Ireland, who "utters the keen... at a wake or funeral." The Oldest Confession The epigraph to Condon's first novel, which appears on the title page of the first American hardback edition, reads in its entirety: The Oldest Confession <br/ > Is one of Need, <br/ >Half the need Love, <br/ > The other half Greed Later we encounter