I must confess straightaway, that I haven't read any of Mr. Purdy's work. I think I'll fix that, and I'll let you know how that works out. But in the meantime, I came across Mr. Purdy's obituary and found within it certain gems such as this:
Wayward and unclassifiable, Mr. Purdy, the author of the novels “Malcolm” and “The Nephew,” labored at the margins of the literary mainstream, inspiring veneration or disdain. His nearly 20 novels and numerous short stories and plays either enchanted or baffled critics with their gothic treatment of small-town innocents adrift in a corrupt and meaningless world, his distinctive blend of plain speech with ornate, florid locutions, and the hallucinatory quality of his often degraded scenes.
My goodness. what wouldn't any of us give to leave this as a legacy? So we should note that William Grimes wrote the obituary, someone who writes restaurant reviews and obituaries for the NYTimes. (And there must be a story in Mr. Grimes, chosen specialization.)
Here's another extract from the obituary:
Mr. Purdy, whose view of American culture was not optimistic, seemed to regard rejection as a badge of honor. “I don’t think I’d like it if people liked me,” he told one interviewer. “I’d think that something had gone wrong.”
And this:
“Reputations are made here, as in Russia, on political respectability, or by commercial acceptability,” he once said. “The worse the author, the more he is known.”
[Link to the obituary in the NYTimes.]
