James Purdy
James
Purdywas born in Ohio in 1923. He lives in Brooklyn Heights and teached
at the New York University. His first books were two small paperbound books
that were printed for private distribution by two of his friends.
The other paperback was somewhat larger, They were published commercially
in England with the titles 63: Dream Palace and later, in the late
fall of 1957, in America as Color of Darkness.
Though none of James Purdy's works of fiction have been commercially
successful, his reputation has grown steadily with each subsequent book
(the novels Malcolm, 1959, The Nephew, 1960, Cabot Wright
Begins, 1964, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, 1967, Mourners
Below 1981, On Glory's Course 1984, Garments the Living Wear
1989, and more, and a second collection of stories and two plays,
Children is All, 1962). 63: Dream Palace and at least one
of his novels are indisputably contemporary classics; his stories have
been anthologized time and time again; his plays have been produced in
Germany and Yugoslavia; his works have been translated into more than a
score of languages including Chinese; critics increasingly reckon him as
one of the major writers of our times. A quiet, contemplative man who avoids
publicity and looks upon the cocktail-and- television-appearances circuit
of the New York publishing world as one of the many manifestations of Hell
in contemporary society, Purdy lives and writes in comparative isolation,
a reject, in his own words, from a sick society.
It is as a prose poet of the grotesque and the alienated that Purdy
has achieved his highest success. His is a strange and highly individual
talent. He is preoccupied with the paradoxes he finds in the human situation
- love-hate, beauty-ugliness, compassion-cruelty. He leads us into a world
in which customary values are reversed, where the familiar suddenly becomes
terrifying, as though one walking through a well known terrain were to
find himself at the edge of a void alive with sights and sounds only partly
recognizable.
The volume The Brooklyn Branding Parlors was first published
in 1986, and later in the collected poems, published in Holland
by Atheneum, for wich occasion he came to Holland and was interviewed by
Adriaan van Dis on the Dutch television.
From U.S. reviews:
"James Purdy is one of the very best writers we have" - New York
Times Book Review
"James Purdy is absolutely, infuringly, original" - Newsweek
"An authentic American genius" - Gore Vidal
"A writer of the highest rank in originality insight and power"
- Dorothy Parker
Novels
63: Dream Palace
Malcolm
The Nephew
Cabot Wright Begins
Eustace Chisholm and the Works
Jeremy's Version
I Am Elijah Thrush
The House of the Solitary Maggot
In a Shallow Grave
Narrow Rooms
Mourners Below
On Glory's Course
In the Hollow of His Hand
Garments the Living Wear
Poetry
An Oyster Is a Wealthy Beast
The Running Sun
Sunshine Is an Only Child
Lessons and Complaints
The Brooklyn Branding Parlors
Stories and Plays
Color of Darkness
Children Is All
A Day after the Fair
Proud Flesh
The Candles of Your Eyes
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