Fiction of Gay Interest

Mourners Below
James Purdy
Publisher: Peter Owen
London, UK

Year


 		1984       first publ USA: 1981
Cover / size: Hardback / h 22.2 cm * w 14.1 cm / 295 pp

Dustjacket?   yes

ISBN: 0720606217

Arbery Ref:   000401

Condition Very Good

Jacket: some slight markings and stains, plus discolouring of rear and flaps. Price sticker added to inside front flap. Boards (purple): one or two almost imperceptible imperfections. Page edges dusty and one leaf at bottom unevenly trimmed. Pages lightly browning as normal with book of this age and quality.

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Purdy: Mourners Below

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Plot / Content:                              Rating: N

"set in a quintessential small town in the Mid West [this novel] tells the story of Duane Bledsoe, a dreamy, innocent seventeen-year-old ho lives in obsessive isolation with his bluff, stoical father and with the ghosts of his older brothers, Justin and Douglas, who have been killed in the war. Pursued by these spectres, Duane is driven inexorably into the bed of Estelle Dumont, Justin's former lover, and to a test of his innocence from which he emerges profoundly changed, his ghosts exorcized, but his ingenuousness miraculously intact."

(from the dustjacket)



Background / Biography:

James Otis Purdy (17 July 1914 – 13 March 2009) was a controversial American novelist, short story-writer, poet, and playwright who published over a dozen novels, several collections of poetry, short stories, and plays. Purdy was the recipient of the Morton Dauwen Zabel Fiction Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1993) and nominated for the 1985 PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel On Glory's Course (1984).


For more information on James Purdy, and other books of his from Arbery Books, click here 		Joseph Hansen Photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1957





Reviews:



"James Purdy taps deep rivers, disturbing undercurrents, in a prose that's poetic int he best sense - a metaphorical structure that compresses and illumines reality without copying it." Los Angeles Times

"Purdy's talent shines through in his highly polished characterizations, the intricate set of interrelationships and deeply foreboding insight." Publishers Weekly

(from the dustjacket)






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"'Did you ever see a boy who likes ice cream so much?'

 Eugene Bledsoe spoke these words concerning his youngest son Duane in Moe's Villa and Sweet Shop, pretending to address some imaginary passerby on the very day he had received the notice from the War Department informing him that his two oldest sons, Justin and Douglas, had died in battle.

 Eugene had summoned Duane into his den and without a word of warning had handed him the telegram, and when the boy had finished reading it, and weakly handed the fluttering yellow paper back to his Dad, the father had said only in a stern reprimand kind of voice 'Duane!' as if he saw Duane about to overturn some expensive imported vase.

'I thought we would go to Moe's Villa.' Eugene then spoke in his everyday humdrum tone, and picking up his straw boater, took Duane by the arm and lead him out of the house."

opening paragraphs




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