Eustace Chisholm and the Works

By James Purdy

Book Overview

A literary cult hero of major proportions, James Purdy's exquisitely surreal fiction--Tennessee Williams meets William S. Burroughs--has been populated for more than forty years by social outcasts living in crisis and longing for love. His acclaimed first novel, Malcolm (1959), won praise from writers as diverse as Dame Edith Sitwell, Dorothy Parker, and Gore Vidal, while his later works, from the award-winning In a Shallow Grave (1976) to Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue (1998), influenced new generations of authors. Eustace Chisholm and the Works, a 1967 novel that became a gay classic, is an especially outspoken book among the author's controversial body of work. Purdy recalls that Eustace Chisholm and the Works--named one of the Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels of the 20th Century--outraged the New York literary establishment. More than breaking out of the pre-Stonewall closet, however, the book liberated its author and readers can be grateful for that.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786715022
• ISBN13: 9780786715022
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Phenomenal

Purdy never disappoints with his stories and characterizations; this is by far one of the most interesting reads I’ve ever experienced.

One-of-a-kind novel that defies easy categorization . .

. . and top-notch all the way! EUSTACHE CHISHOLM AND THE WORKS doesn't fit into easy subgenre or marketing categorizations because its era (bottom of the Depression ca. 1931), setting (the incredibly diverse Hyde Park district of South Side Chicago, near the U. of Chicago campus) and cast of characters (de facto leader Eustace Chisholm and his "works," a bunch of guys semi-squatting in a tax-overdue house) are difficult to type after seventy years of New Deal, Joseph McCarthy, Vietnam, and Televangelism. Taken strictly on its own terms, EUSTACE comes across as a work of 1930s social realism (although written in the 1960s), a masterfully wrought work, nicely nuanced yet accessible . . . and great fun. Principal players are title character Eustace Chisholm and his "works," a kind of rough-hewn rat pack who rely on their de facto leader's one-day-at-a-time problem-solving as they face the ironic stresses that the rest of the USA also faced during the early 1930s--living in a capitalist economy without capital. Their situation was hardly unique. From farm to town to metropolis, one-third of a nation found itself unemployed and--most trying of all--the Hoover administration, following pre-Keynesian economic policy, paradoxically pulled back on the federal money supply, upwardly sucking the currency from use, recovery and hope. (Think of Studs Terkel's *HARD TIMES* and other oral accounts of the Great Depression, the common refrain: "All of a sudden there was no money!") A great deal of this novel's comic tension lies between the conditional sympathy many readers will feel toward the lead characters and their demi-monde and the automatic fellow-feeling wired in the American DNA toward their economic plight as mass casualties of the Great Depression's fiscal meltdown. In concert with Eustace's innate wisdom and street smarts, "The Works" understood that life in a money-free money economy made them something like Busby Berkeley's "Golddiggers" of movie fame: They were "in the money" because they "had a lot of what it [took] to get along." If that meant the occasional venture into horizontal service, well, German playwright Bertolt Brecht puts it nicely: *Erst das Fressen, dann die Moral*: "Food first, morals afterward." EUSTACE is certainly worth reading with a queer eye, but it is no more totally beholden to the canon of Gay Literature than is BABBITT totally a book about Real Estate. It's Purdy's great gift--as previous reviewers have hymned so well--that he can find sweetness in the ordinary and in what (to many people) might sound sordid and mean. Crucial to this is that he does so without distortion, propagandizing or advocacy. This is REAL literature, and sadly overlooked at that. Eustace & Co. are a mixture of sugar and spice, compromise and charm. As such, they are just as much in the American grain as Mose and Addie Pray in the novella that sparked the movie *PAPER MOON*: shrewd little Addie understands that sometimes a

Color of Darkness

No better way to start this short little review with one of the most beautiful titles ever found (by Purdy): Color of Darkness. Almost all of Purdy's work can be characterized by this metaphor. His most famous works (Eustace Chisholm, Malcolm, Narrow Rooms, In A Shallow Grave) belong to the most mysteriously beautiful American novels ever and the literature of the whole Western World. Truly American in characters, truly universal in themata, truly disturbing in effect. He reminded me of those other greatgreatgreat American authors, Flannery o'Connor, Faulkner and Poe. Younger authors like Easton Ellis and the likes of him are simply looking bleak and lifeless compared with Purdy, although i also liked reading them. Purdy's work is really about Love and the disturbing effects of it on humans and the human society. Never was there an American author who understood so deeply the fundamental qualities and nature of Human Love, clearifying it, to make the reader understand, to feel the fundamental and terrible force of it. I can't even begin to tell about the beauty of his work. I read Eustace Chisholm, Narrow Rooms, In A Shallow Grave years and years ago, I don't even know whether Purdy lives or is dead, but the effect of his work is there, again and again, never to leave anymore. I can only wish there was more of such work.I am so glad that there are still Americans who also appreciate his work, and that they write so highly regarding of him. People all over the world should read it, especially in these days when the ultimate form of love seems primarily to be transformed into the Love For...Homeland ...Read it, for God's sake.

James Purdy at his best

I find it hard to believe that James Purdy is so neglected when he is so good. If you're a fan of Flannery O'Conner, I urge you to read Purdy - you will not be disappointed. "Eustace Chisholm" is a stunning achievement. A compelling tale of unrequited love,self loathing, and horror. This is a great train wreck of a book, filled with charcaters and situations you may wish you'd never encountered, and yet you are compelled by forces ungovernable to continue reading. Yes, the material is dark. The characters fail to come together in any positive ways - quite the contrary. Purdy has populated his tale with emotional illiterates; people who most assuredly feel that God has forgotten them. The story of Amos and Daniel is rife with symbolism - innocence corrupted, love demonized, self flagellation - it's all here. The conclusion is quite stunning, horrible and real. Purdy is a true American original, a Gay author who wrote about gay people long before it was fashionable to do so. DO NOT LET THIS ONE GET AWAY UNREAD.

must read for the feeble minded!

I cannot remember having read a book that made me souneasy. Why read it then, you may ask? Because, as the liberal mindedperson I thought I was (liberal)before reading this book. I liked to be accepting of all aspects of human desire, however concocted they seemed to me. The book abuses that spirit by presenting desires that are hard to accept as "humane" or "healthy", while at the same time the fulfilment of those desires are convincingly portrayed as redeeming and liberating. But how can I accept what to me seems most gruelsome? I think the book showed me that what I thought was my liberal accepting spirit, was in fact more some sort of... curiosity. I feel all the better for it.