James Purdy has died. To most average readers I suspect this news is met with a shrugged "who dat?" Allow me to say we just lost a good one--far and away my favorite novelist. His works aren't for the squeamish, drenched as they are in turgid obsession, Southern Gothic imagery, a hefty dose of melodrama and--above all--sex, sex, sex (usually repressed, but not always). In Purdy's worlds golden birds nest in the bellies of human hosts, huts in secluded groves hide orgies upon piles of fresh-baked pies, and tortured souls degrade themselves in carnal quests for youth, beauty, innocence--and even love. Purdy was truly sui generis; I can't think of another writer who so boldly plunged into the messiest human impulses. Tennessee Williams' damaged protagonists, particularly Streetcar's Blanche, were surely distant cousins of the inhabitants of Purdy's books, but where Williams let our imagination fill in the blanks of Miss DuBois' shady past, Purdy would have let it rip and told us everything in decadent paragraphs of his trademark florid prose. It's gorgeous and frustrating writing, a very peculiar alchemy of bodice ripper meets Gordon Merrick meets Flannery O'Connor. And I am very sad today. Viva Purdy!
