James Purdy

James Otis Purdy (July 17, 1914 – March 13, 2009) was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet, and playwright who, since his debut in 1956, published over a dozen novels, and many collections of poetry, short stories, and plays. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages and in 2013 his short stories were collected in The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy.

James Purdy's "dark, often savagely comic fiction evoked a psychic American landscape of deluded innocence, sexual obsession, violence and isolation." (NY Times obituary) He was an author of novels, short stories, poetry and plays. His works were controversial and often panned by critics but received praise from authors such as Edward Albee, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Gore Vidal.

Purdy grew up in Ohio before moving to Chicago. After serving in the Army, he attended the University of Puebla in Puebla, Mexico, the University of Chicago and the University of Madrid. From 1949 to 1953 he taught at Lawrence College in Appleton, Wis. In 1960 he moved to New York City, where his literary career took off after meeting photographer Carl Van Vechten.

Purdy was the recipient of the Morton Dauwen Zabel Fiction Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1993) and was nominated for the 1985 PEN/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.

Purdy's first novel, Malcolm (1959), is a bizarre, comic novel of the picaresque, presenting the strange experiences of a 15‐year‐old boy as in his search for his lost father he wanders through a world of depravity. It was dramatized (1965) by Albee. The Nephew (1960), his second novel, tells of the revelations following the death in war of the nephew of a doting spinster, a retired schoolteacher, in a small Midwest town, who decides to write a memorial booklet. She thereby learns more than she wants to about him and about life as she discovers he was a homosexual. Cabot Wright Begins (1964), a satirical novel on the American scene, presents a compulsive but mild‐mannered rapist who is himself “raped” by editors and publishers wanting to create a best seller out of his experiences. Eustace Chisholm and the Works (1967) treats loving relations as well as destructive encounters between homosexuals. I Am Elijah Thrush (1972) presents a story of even more complex relations among men of different ages, backgrounds, and natures. In a Shallow Grave (1975) is about a hideously disfigured veteran trying to return to his childhood sweetheart, a different instance of alienation. "Sleepers in Moon‐Crowned Valleys" is a trilogy composed of Jeremy's Version (1970), The House of the Solitary Maggot (1974), and Mourners Below (1981), about the strained, bizarre relations of a Midwest family. Narrow Rooms (1978) is a novel about homosexual passions, and On Glory's Course (1984) treats the lives and often odd loves of a town of Midwesterners in the 1930s. His next novel, In the Hollow of His Hand (1986), treats the generally unhappy adventures of the son of a Midwestern Indian and his illegal mother, a society lady. Garments the Living Wear (1989), a shorter tale, presents characters caught in the general corruption of New York City. Out with the Stars (1994) evokes scenes of the gay community in New York City in the last moments before AIDS and Stonewall, in terms half nostalgic, half satiric. The Color of Darkness (1957) collects stories and a novella, which Purdy and a collaborator adapted for the stage (1963). Children Is All (1962) also collects stories and two plays, and further plays appear in A Day After the Fair (1977) along with poems. The Running Sun