Very soon after its initial American publication in May 1964, Candy received a number of positive reviews in the influential sectors of the print media. Although it was alleged that the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune refused to carry advertisements for the book, (Life 8/21/1964), the New York Times Book Review carried a major review, by Conrad Knickerbocker, on May 17, covering two-thirds of a page. Knickerbocker describes the book as a "marvelous prank": ... "a sternly written moral satire on sexual attitudes that might have indeed been a comic classic, had the authors seen fit to develop their ideas much beyond the cafe-table stage." The review goes on to associate Southern with the other emerging novelists, such as Pynchon, Heller and Barth. On May 14, the New York Review of Books had a review by William Styron, describing the book as "wickedly funny ... and morally bracing". These influential reviews set the tone of the immediate critical reception of Candy, by emphasizing the novel's satirical mode: in the midst of the great "porn debate" of the early and mid-sixties, the critics of the major New York publications asserted Candy's relevance as not a "dirty book" (which had been, frankly, Southern and Hoffenberg's original intention), but as a moral, ironic commentary upon the sexual mores of contemporary society.

Another influential review of the novel upon its release came from Nelson Algren, in The Nation of May 18, 1964. Over three and half pages, Algren reviews Southern's literary career to date, asserting that "[a]fter Candy, sex in America is never going to be quite the same", and comparing Southern, favorably, with his cohort: Farrell, Bellow, Mailer, and Styron. (It might be observed that Southern was fortunate in that at least two major reviews, by Styron and by Algren, were written by friends.)

After the mid-sixties, however, as Southern moved into Hollywood screenwriting, there were few further critical responses to Candy. Upon its first publication, in a considerably reduced and censored form in Britain in 1968, a number of reviews returned to the question of "pornography." For example, R. G. G. Price, in the weekly magazine, Punch of September 18, 1968, found the book relatively innocuous and "lighthearted", but queried its status as "satire". The leading London critic, Ian Hamilton, in The Listener of September 12, 1968, observes that the book's humor invalidates the "high art" argument that had been proposed in favour of the publication of such books as Lady Chatterley's Lover and Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn: its very lack of seriousness, Hamilton suggests, lets the guard down.

Nevertheless, interestingly, Hamilton views the book as an attack on "American" values: "god-fearing, ad-enslaved, over-analysed America ...'the book has a message after all!'." On the other hand, in one of the very few academic articles written on the book, William Walling insists on the intensely, and nostalgic background to Candy as a product of the American 1950s, within the context of the apparent sexual constraints as expressed in the popular cultural forms of the Eisenhower era. Walling's analysis, provocative and intelligent, was a signal exception to the absence of interest in Southern's work by academic authors up to the end of the 1990s.

Southern's late publications, and death in the 1990s gave rise to a number of reconsiderations of his work, but almost all of these retrospectives and obituaries seemed to consider the writer as having failed to fulfil early promise, and his novels as of little interest, other than as signposts to a lost generation. However, Southern's death in 1995 coincided with an awakening of interest in the "sixties", and as Lee Hill's biography, A Grand Guy, and numerous obituaries attest, Southern himself has become the object of interest, as one of the cultural icons of the decade. (Note, for example, how many 1990s' reviews and obituaries begin with the observation that Southern is one of the figures on the cover of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper.) Such works as the forthcoming The Candy Men, by Southern's son, Nile Southern, may (at the time of writing in November 2002) lead to a reconsideration of the slight, but significant oeuvre of the author.

Sources cited:

William Styron, 'Tootsie Rolls' [Review of Candy] New York Review of Books, May 14, 1964.

Conrad Knickerbocker, 'Candide as Co-ed' [Review of Candy] New York Times Book Review, May 17, 1964.

Nelson Algren, 'The Donkeyman by Twilight' [Review of Candy] The Nation, May 18, 1964.

Ian Hamilton, 'Cutting Candy Dead' [review of Candy, British edition], The Listener, Sept. 12, 1968.

R. G. G. Price, [review of Candy, British edition], Punch, Sept. 18, 1968.

William Walling, 'Candy in Context,' in Comedy: New Perspectives, ed. Maurice Charney [New York Literary Forum, vol. I] New York: Spring, 1978.

Lee Hill, A Grand Guy: The Life and Art of Terry Southern New York, 2001.