Eternal Fire

by Calder Willingham

Randy dreams of his love for Laurie Mae, the Judge dreams of destruction, Laurie Mae dreams of love and suicide, and Harry Diadem dreams of love rapacious and profane, in this story to the universal battle between good and evil

Genres: Fiction

630 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

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 5 out of 5]

Superb in every way. A classic tale of good and evil written tongue and cheek by a master. Some of the colorful Southern characters don't date well but that adds to the timeliness of the piece. It was written in 1963 and takes place in 1963. An unjustly forgotten author.

[Chris Gager · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first part of this book appeared originally in "Playboy". Easy to see why. Very sexy... The rest of the book contains plenty of sex too. Controversial in it's time for the portayal of the South. I was talking with a fellow sailor(US Navy) in Pensacola once and mentioned that I'd just read the book. He was a southerner and said it was "a pack o' lies". Date read is approximate. Gotta wonder why more contemporary readers haven't read this and other books by CW, who was quite well regarded in his time and was a pretty prominent Hollywood screenwriter. The title might have been taken from Faulkner's Appendix to "The Sound and the Fury".

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tremendously enjoyable and readable, containing characters you can believe in and care about, with great storytelling into the bargain.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like dirty Carson McCullers. An indictment of the hypocrisy of the Old South with lots of gothic details. And also sex.

[Lisa Roper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an old book that my Mom loved, and I finally was able to find a copy. Old fashioned good vs evil book. Great winter novel!

[William Castlebury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of Part 1 appeared in a 1963 or 4 issue of Playboy titled Bus Story (to my recollection) about protagonist Harry’s impromptu dalliance with his comely seatmate on a bus - it was enticingly racy! Because I had read that, I was intrigued to pick up a copy of the book Eternal Fire when it was released in paperback. I always thought it would eventually be interpreted on film, maybe by Stanley Kubrik similarly to Eyes Wide Shut, but to no avail!

Suffice it to say that in the time intervening between my reading of Playboy’s Bus Story and Eternal Fire, I had my own “plane story” at age 21 on a charter flight on a Flying Tigers prop plane from NYC to London for a summer job in 1964 in a research lab of a sanitary/electrical porcelain ceramics factory in Skane Provence, Sweden, evaluating microwave high frequency pre-forming of extruded clay cylinders; at lunch time, the factory workers would heat their lunches in our fridge-sized unit - this was years before we all got microwaves on our kitchen counters!

[Philip Magnier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books stay with you, this certainly was one of those for me. I first read it in the 1970s and again in the 1980s. I'll read it again someday and I'm looking forward to seeing it with older eyes.

The characterisations are very exaggerated, gargoyles almost in some instances, but they always elicit sympathy or interest: the virginal schoolteacher and her repressed boyfriend, the deputy sheriff haunted by an unforgivable sin, the corrupt but dumb judge, the sexual viper with a wake of human destruction, the physically strong hunchback dwarf with no understanding.

An unjustly forgotten masterpiece of the southern American states. Be warned, however, that some of the scenes could be upsetting.

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

New York: The Vanguard Press, 1963
good, solid Novel

[Shivon]

glen hirshberg

[At Aur]

i want to read this book