Eustace Chisholm and the Works Paperback by James Purdy

Product Details

• Publisher: Liveright (2015-04-14)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 256 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780871409522
• Item Weight: 243.81 grams
• Dimensions: 20.93 x 14.0 x 1.93 cm

"[S]o good that almost any novel you read immediately after it will seem at least a little bit posturing." —Jonathan Franzen

No James Purdy novel has dazzled contemporary writers more than this haunting tale of unrequited love in an indifferent world. A seedy depression-era boarding house in Chicago plays host to "a game of emotional chairs" (The Guardian) in a novel initially condemned for its frank depiction of abortion, homosexuality, and life on the margins of American society. A cast of characters displaced by economic distress congeal around the embittered poet Eustace Chisholm, who acts as a something of a Greek chorus for the doomed and destructive relationship that is instigated when landlord Daniel Haws falls in love with young college student Amos Ratcliffe. Building to a shocking conclusion, Eustace Chisholm and the Works is a dark and gothic look at the strange and terrible power of love amid a "psychic American landscape of deluded innocence, sexual obsession, violence, and isolation" (William Grimes, New York Times).

About the Author

James Purdy, born in 1914, is undergoing a major literary renaissance. The author of Malcolm and now The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy, he lived in New York until his death in 2009.