4x4: Stairway to the Sea; This Night in Sodom; Custom; The Apostate Heriger

by Thomas Firth Jones, Charles Jules Reiter, John Schultz

Thomas Firth Jones: 'Stairway to the Sea'
John Schultz: 'Custom'
Charles Jules Reiter:'This Night in Sodom'
Anthony Shafton: 'The Apostate Heriger'

288 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1962

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four novellas from four American writers who went on to publish nothing else of repute, squirted into book form by Grove Press in 1962. The first ‘Stairway to the Sea’ is an early swinging sixties story of three art students in a sexual ménage, one of whom is chronically depressed and brilliant, the other of whom is plump and untalented. They ride motorcycles and have unsatisfactory sex. ‘This Night in Sodom’ is an ambitious, whiffy stew of stylistic missteps, with typographical play and cringeworthy Ebonics, concerning an ageing white professor who spends a night with a black prostitute. ‘Custom’ is the strongest of the four, a surreal tale of a randy travelling salesman who, unable to locate the local brothel, winds up in a house where sailing re-enactments are created in the front room with the aid of an in-built water pump. The evening descends into strange visions and scary small-town persecution. ‘The Apostate Heriger’ is an unappealing tale of a monk who commits bestial acts on pooches, written in the confession format. These four novellas are all interesting curios from writers who never stayed the course.