Viereck wrote this at twenty-two. It’s a novel about an older writer who drains the creative gifts of the young men who come to stay in his house. No fangs. No cape. Just charm, proximity, and the gradual disappearance of whatever the younger man brought in with him.

The book’s achievement is that it never decides whether the older writer knows what he’s doing. Predator or mentor, deliberate or oblivious — both readings hold all the way to the last page.

Viereck went on to lose himself to five decades of political absorption, federal prison, and public disgrace. He described the condition at twenty-two and did not recognise it in himself.

— G. H. Schreiber 

20/04/2026