The Building of Venus Four

by Calder Willingham

317 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1977

About the author

Calder Willingham, (born Dec. 22, 1922, Atlanta, Ga.—died Feb. 19, 1995, Laconia, N.H.) U.S. novelist and screenwriter who, was lionized at the age of 24 after the publication of the explicit End as a Man (1947), a graphic and lurid account of life at a southern military school resembling South Carolina’s Citadel, where Willingham was enrolled for one year. The novel, which achieved commercial success after the publisher was unsuccessfully prosecuted for obscenity, was made into a film called The Strange One (1957). Willingham was grouped with such other young writers as Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote, all of whom employed the same gritty realism. His success was not repeated in his other novels, however, and he explored that theme in his last book, The Big Nickel (1975). In later years Willingham gained success as a screenwriter with such credits as Paths of Glory (1957), The Vikings (1958), One-Eyed Jacks (1961), The Graduate (1967), Little Big Man (1970), and Rambling Rose (1991), an adaptation of his same-titled 1972 novel. Shortly before his death he finished an original screenplay for Steven Spielberg.

Reviews

[Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not one of Calder Willingham’s better books. It starts out as a space opera on a rocket ship filled with beautiful women who are leaving the Earth before the sun explodes. Then it turned out that this was the fever dream of the man who is in charge of the spaceship and he’s really a psychiatric patient. It has some of the authors, usual humor and obsession with sex.

It is a very rare book when I was lucky enough that it was included in a collection that I purchased, but I wouldn’t pay any exorbitant amount of money for it unless you were a completist!