A soldier named Garnet Montrose returns home to coastal Virginia bearing a grotesque injury which is nauseatingly repellent to anyone who sees him. He hires two young male caretakers, Quintus Pearch and Potter Daventry, who look after his disability. They
A powerful story of love turned round, of passion and fierce discovery, of lives illuminated by flickering violence.As Purdy spins the story of the extraordinary symbiotic relationship between four boys in a remote West Virginia mountain town, led by the
The Nephew (1960), Purdy's 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 wa
Cabot Wright is a handsome, Yale-educated stockbroker and scion of a good family. He also happens to be the convicted rapist of nearly three hundred women. Bernie Gladhart is a naive used-car salesman from Chicago, who—spurred on by his ambitious wife�
No Purdy work has dazzled contemporary writers more than this haunting tale of unrequited love in an indifferent world. A seedy Depression-era boardinghouse in Chicago plays host to a game of emotional chairs (Guardian) in a novel initially condemned for
Introduced simply as the boy on the bench, the titular character of Malcolm is a Candide-like figure who is picked up by the most famous astrologer of his period and introduced to a series of increasingly absurd characters and bizarre situations in the mo
When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the mediathough long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candor about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revela
Snoopy finds himself almost completely engrossed in his persona as the World War I Flying Ace — to the point where he goes to camp with Charlie Brown and maintains his persona throughout the entire two-week period (much to Peppermint Patty's bafflement)
To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. Thus begins John Waters's autobiography. And what a story it is. Opening with his upbringing in Baltimore ("Charm City"
