James Purdy

James Purdy
Photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1957 Photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1957
Occupation	Novelist, poet, playwright
Nationality	United States
Genre	Drama, fictional prose

James Otis Purdy (17 July 1914–13 March 2009) was a controversial American novelist, short story-writer, poet, and playwright who since his debut (63: Dream Palace, 1956) had published over a dozen novels, and several collections of poetry, short stories, and plays. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages. It has been praised by writers as diverse as Dame Edith Sitwell (an important early advocate), Dorothy Parker, Edward Albee, James M. Cain, Terry Southern, Lillian Hellman, A.N. Wilson, Francis King, Gore Vidal (who described Purdy as "an authentic American genius") and Marianne Moore. Purdy has been the recipient of the Morton Dauwen Zabel Fiction Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1993) and was nominated for the P.E.N.-Faulkner Award for his novel On Glory's Course (1984). In addition, he won two Guggenheim Fellowships (1958 and 1962), and grants from the Ford Foundation (1961), and Rockefeller Foundation. He worked as an interpreter and lectured in Europe with the United States Information Agency.

Early years

Purdy was born in Hicksville, Ohio, and educated at Findlay High School (graduated in 1932) and the University of Chicago and the University of Puebla in Mexico.

Writing career

From the start, his work had often been at the edge of what was printable: Gollancz could not bring himself to print the word "motherfucker" in the 1957 UK edition of 63: Dream Palace; decades later, the German government tried to ban Narrow Rooms, but a court threw the case out. Although many readers were scandalized, a solid cadre of distinguished critics and scholars embraced his work from the start, including John Cowper Powys and Susan Sontag, who warmly defended him against prurient critics.

His early novel Malcolm was for decades a staple of the undergraduate American Literature curriculum of most American colleges and universities. Malcolm may have slipped from its place in the canon in recent years due to its irregular publishing history. This is consequent upon the contractual confusion that arose when Purdy agreed to permit Edward Albee to adapt it for the stage. In spite of this ongoing and unresolved problem, Malcolm is currently in print.

Following several reissues of previously out-of-print novels, as well as a recent appreciation by Gore Vidal in the New York Times Book Review, Purdy's work is currently enjoying a renaissance. As Edward Albee wrote long ago, there is a Purdy renaissance every ten years, like clockwork. Albee has been proved right every decade since.

Since the 1990s, when great age began to make itself felt, he had worked closely with his companion John Uecker (who was previously the last amanuensis of Tennessee Williams), a partnership that resulted in such late masterpieces as Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue (1997) and Moe's Villa (2003, 2005). He continued to dictate to a small team of devoted friends, and ascribed his continued intellectual vigor to the drinking of green tea and the avoidance of alcohol and tobacco. His advice to young writers was to 'banish shame'.

Purdy wrote anonymous letters since age nine. His first was written to his mother's landlady who, in young Purdy's view, was grasping. Countless thousands have been written since, many now owned by persons who have no idea of their provenance or value, although the style is inimitable. One of his very latest, written when he was 92, to a redactor who had displeased him by moving from New York to Montana, can be seen at http://hermeseta.com/purdyanon.html. This features some of Purdy's drawings, which have attracted some attention.

Purdy continued to dictate and to draw nearly every day until his death.

Adaptations

The American composer Robert Helps (1928-2001), a friend of Purdy's, used Purdy's texts in two of his works, The Running Sun and Gossamer Noons, both of which have been recorded by the soprano Bethany Beardslee.

The playwright Edward Albee adapted Malcolm for the stage, but it was a notable flop, perhaps because Albee cut out the black characters in the book. This cuts out the very meat of the book, for the story makes no sense without the final affair between Malcolm and the young jazz singer, which echoed Purdy's relationship with Billie Holiday.

Death

After several years of declining health, he fractured a hip and died in Englewood, New Jersey on 13 March 2009.

Selected works

• 63: Dream Palace (1956)
• Malcolm (1959)
• Colour of Darkness (1961)
• The Nephew (1961)
• Children is All (1963)
• Cabot Wright Begins (1965)
• Eustace Chisholm And the Works (1967)
• Jeremy's Version (1970)
• I Am Elijah Thrush (1972)
• Color of Darkness Malcolm (1974)
• In a Shallow Grave (1976)
• Narrow Rooms (1978)
• Lessons And Complaints (1978)
• Dream Palaces: Three Novels (omnibus) (1980)
• Mourners Below (1981)
• On Glory's Course (1984)
• The House of the Solitary Maggot (1986)
• The Brooklyn Branding Parlors (poems) (1986)
• In the Hollow of His Hand (1986)
• The Candles of Your Eyes (1988)
• Garments the Living Wear (1989)
• Garments (1989)
• Out with the Stars (1992)
• Dream Palace: Selected Stories, 1956-87 (1992)
• Epistles of Care (1995)
• Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue (1996)
• Moe's Villa and Other Stories (2000, 2005)

External links

• The James Purdy Society
• The Literary Encyclopedia entry on James Purdy
• Who Is James Purdy? - an appreciation from Edward Albee
• A conversation with James Purdy