Malcolm by James Purdy

New York : Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1959

James Purdy's Malcolm is both a contemporary comedy of manners and a satire of class and its trappings. Malcolm is a beautiful 15-year-old who spends his days on a bench outside the hotel where he lives. He is an innocent whose father disappeared nearly a year ago, and yet he still waits for his return. Short on funds, he's unsure what he will do.

Mr. Cox, an astrologer, is drawn to Malcolm and sees it as his responsibility to move him along from spending his days on this bench. In fact, he sees it as his responsibility to tell everyone what he thinks they should do; after all, it's in the stars. Cox connects Malcolm to a series of characters by providing him the addresses of his friends.

Malcolm meets 'little man', Kermit, a midget artist who is supported by his much larger wife Laureen, magnate Girard Girard and his wife Madame Girard for whom money is no object, artist Eloisa and her ex-con husband Jerome. They all struggle to posses Malcolm, to have the power to 'mature him'. His youth and inexperience, and frankly his lack of education, make for a great deal of comedy through misunderstanding. What follows is a pitched battle for ownership of Malcolm's youth and beauty, while highlighting the class distinctions among the players.

All of the characters are drawn to Malcolm. Some appear to want to protect his youth and innocence, while others seem intent on destroying it. While handled subtly, the suggestion that some of the male characters have a sexual interest in Malcolm as well as in one another appears throughout the work. This sexual fluidity is a hallmark of Purdy's characters and writing.

Written in a theatrical style, it's easy to see why it was re-cast as a play by Edward Albee in 1966.


Bibliographies & Ratings: Young (3150*)

Eustace Chisholm and the Works by James Purdy

New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1967

In a New Yorker piece from 2015, Jon Michaud suggests that Eustace Chisholm and the Works is "the peak of Purdy's career, the book of his to read if you’re only going to read one." Having only read Purdy's extraordinary short fiction, Eustace seemed to be the best place to begin an exploration of his longer form work. Purdy doesn't disappoint.

Set in mid 1930s depression era Chicago, Purdy's fifth novel gathers around Eustace Chisholm, a collection of Americans from small towns and rural areas who've come to the city in hopes of escaping financial hardship. Amos Ratcliffe, a student who loses his university fellowship and is too young to qualify for public aid is teaching Eustace basic Greek. Clayton Harms, an electric sign salesman moves in with Eustace when his wife Carla Chisholm goes on the run. Daniel Haws has a problem with sleepwalking and struggles with the impossibility of his feelings for young Amos. Maureen O'Dell is an artist who frequently finds herself in a family way.

Purdy's skill lies in his ability to create interpersonal tension among his characters. This is exemplified in the interactions between Amos and Daniel where they can't acknowledge what their relationship is or if there is a relationship at all. The already impossible situation between Amos and Daniel is made all the more impossible by Reuben Masterson, the heir to a family fortune who uses his money and position to lure Amos and Captain Stadger, a power hungry military officer, whose relentless attacks on Daniel eventually escalate to a soul-suffering defense of love.

The theme of the novel, in fact, is love; searching for love in a desperate world, accepting a love that may not appear in the form imagined, feeling worthy of that love, and enduring extraordinary pain in defense of that love. Purdy uses the mythologies of both ancient Greece and of Christianity to connect the characters lives to a larger moral story. Amos, a scholar of Greek, is described at one point as having feet like a goat (a reference to a satyr) and later as like the beautiful golden-locked Antinous. While modern literature is full of Freudian themes when it comes to explaining sexuality, Purdy uses a literal Oedipal moment to do so. Many of the characters' destinies seem out of their control and this idea of fate is introduced through a modern fortune teller; or what the Greeks would call an Oracle.

The larger story is couched in the Christian tradition. One can understand the gathering of characters as a pilgrimage of sorts where Eustace is the center of a group of disciples. Eustace in many ways acts as a confessor, the one with whom they can share their truths. Even when characters leave Chicago, letters to Eustace continue their stories. These epistles then become part of his grand poem written out on stacks of newspaper pages. Is his epic poem a Greek tragedy, scripture, or both?

Eustace Chisholm and the Works is story on a grand scale steeped in the traditions of myth. Purdy skillfully uses everyday lives to tell the larger story of humanity and elevates those lives that society would rather forget. One cannot help but be shaken by the power of this story and Purdy's writing.

References
Michaud, Jon (2015, July 21) The Strange, Unsettling Fiction of James Purdy : The New Yorker.


Bibliographies & Ratings: Young (3147*)

James Purdy (July 17, 1914-March 13, 2009)

I became aware of James Purdy’s work shortly before his death in 2009. Not knowing exactly where to begin, I decided to begin at the beginning with his collection of short stories titled, Don’t Call Me By My Right Name (subsequently published with his first novella 63: Dream Palace as Color of Darkness (New Directions, 1961)). I haven’t been so enamored with a short story collection in a very long while. Having recently picked up a copy of The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy (Liveright, 2013), I look forward to reading more of his work. Wired for Books has posted some very good interviews with Purdy conducted by Don Swaim in the 1980s.

This post originally appeared in slightly different form  on FritzPeters.info, April 18, 2009.