Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse

by Denis Johnson

Two plays—hilarious and searing in equal measure—by one of our most essential and original authors

In his poetry, short stories, novels, and plays, Denis Johnson has explored the story of America—especially of the West, land of self-made men and self-perpetuating myths—with a searing honesty and genuine sympathy. In these two plays, written in verse both hypnotic and clear, he confirms his position as one of our great verbal stylists, and a literary conscience for our times.

In Soul of A Whore, a lively cast of characters—faith healers, pimps, strippers, actual demons—converges, with unexpected hilarity, as Bess Cassandra awaits execution for the murder of her infant daughter. Purvis’s seven reverse-chronological scenes catalog the fall and rise of Melvin Purvis, the G-man who brought down John Dillinger and Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Johnson takes us from Washington’s backrooms to a Midwestern cornfield, dramatizing the seductive allure of power and our own human capacity for both pettiness and grace.

In these furiously entertaining, occasionally terrifying works, Denis Johnson chronicles and questions America’s myths, heroes, and everyday realities with verve and elegance, proving once again that he is at the height of his linguistic and insightful powers.  

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 2012

About the author

Poet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He earned a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and received many awards for his work, including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction (1993), a Whiting Writer's Award (1986), the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review for Train Dreams, and most recently, the National Book Award for Fiction (2007).

Reviews

[Ethan Inglis · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5 stars)

Purvis is pretty equal to the second play in Shoppers. Soul of… is pretty equal to the first play in Shoppers. Love Denis Johnson’s dialogue but his plays are easily the weakest stuff I’ve read from him. Still great, but with some reservations.

[Phil reading_fastandslow · Rating 4 out of 5]

For Denis, theatre was a sandbox, a hobby. His plays were polarizing, maybe even mostly disliked, but that’s part of their intrigue imo. They’re not trying to be tidy or universally loved. Instead, they’re experiments in form. These two in particular are poetry shaped for the stage, like wacky Shakespeare plays in free verse. The dialogue is stilted and painterly, not meant to be realistic, and that refusal to settle into naturalism is exactly what makes them so fascinating. Johnson uses the stage to push his ongoing thematic obsessions (politics, faith, American myth) into new shapes.

Soul of a Whore ties directly into one of his deepest recurring themes: a lifelong grappling with religion. The play stages demons, faith healers, and executioners, with the Cassandra family reappearing from his earlier plays. A Greyhound bus station becomes a kind of purgatory, a place where hustlers and seekers wrestle over damnation and grace. The verse allows these figures (stripper, hostage-taker, preacher, condemned mother) to speak in heightened, mythic tones, echoing both biblical language and Johnson’s own fiction. It’s hallucinatory, darkly funny, and perplexing to imagine it on the stage, yet it extends his familiar world of drifters and sinners into a theatrical meditation on sin and salvation.

Purvis is connected by the same preoccupation with personal mythology, looking at how power rewrites the legends of its heroes. The play runs backward in time from LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover in the Oval Office to the days of Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson, showing how a jealous Hoover sought to diminish the man that killed the famous outlaws. It’s irreverent and absurd at times. Both plays ask: who decides what makes a hero, and how does belief, whether in God, justice, or government, shape that story?

[Kien Pham · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the features that makes these two plays stand out is that they are both written in verse, which can be a turn-off for many but appreciated by the right readers. I personally really enjoyed Purvis, for it is an intense historical satire, with Edgar Hoover, Melvin Purvis and John Dillinger playing key roles (and Lyndon Johnson in shorts). This goes without saying that Soul of a Whore certainly has its charms, most of which are displayed in their unique set of characters.

[Wes Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soul of a Whore - 2 stars
Purvis - 5 stars

[Guy Salvidge · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m sure these plays would be very entertaining on the stage, but on the page they hurt my head.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soul of a Whore 3/5
Purvis 4/5

[Drew Grauerholz · Rating 3 out of 5]

So here's the thing...

Don't take this as advice not to read this. This is a to each his own type of situation.

I am a big, big Denis Johnson fan. I read Jesus' Son when I was 19 and it was life changing. I moved on to Angels, Fiskadoro, Stars at Noon, Already Dead, and still feel he is one of the most talented writers that we have, period. And what's great is he's written a lot! So of course there are going to be books in his catalogue that you may not like as much, and that's a good thing. It gives you a lot to explore at different times in your life. For some reason, Tree of Smoke just didn't hit me all that hard, and believe you me I was psyched! Same goes for The Name of the World, and to a lesser extent, Nobody Move. I've heard it said that he is a writer's writer. I get that. He can get as lofty as anyone else. But/So there are just some areas of his work that just don't resonate with me. I find his poetry pretty much impenetrable. That's not to say it's not good, I just feel like I need it explained to me. Yet I love reading plays so of course I finally went head long into what he's published so far. Shoppers, his first set of plays, was killer. All the DJ hellfire and revelation at the bottom of a whiskey bottle in full effect. And it works. They are truly well written and moving. Then we get Soul of a Whore and Purvis.

Written in verse! Major, major point! So you have to be into that. To me, writing a modern play in verse is something akin to showing off your chops, and DJ is certainly a master, but does it work? I don't know. I try to imagine the actor's reading their lines and I wonder how exactly it would sound and feel and I'm just not sure if it actually serves the play. Soul of Whore brings back characters and themes from Shoppers but since verse is getting into poetry territory, I still feel like I need a class to really understand it. Don't get me wrong, both plays are bonkers, in a good way. Purvis is especially interesting, with LBJ, J. Edgar, John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd as characters, you are certainly on a wild ride. But again, since it is written in verse and I am no expert on how to apply that to modern theater, I feel a distance between me and the work. So ultimately, I have to throw my hands up and say "Goddamn, that guy can write. But what the hell was that all about?"

If anyone wants to school me on this, I am extremely eager to learn.

[Tuxlie]

Two plays--hilarious and searing in equal measure--by one of our most essential and original authors

In his poetry, short stories, novels, and plays, Denis Johnson has explored the story of America--especially of the West, land of self-made men and self-perpetuating myths--with a searing honesty and genuine sympathy. In these two plays, written in verse both hypnotic and clear, he confirms his position as one of our great verbal stylists, and a literary conscience for our times.

Purvis's seven reverse-chronological scenes catalog the fall and rise of Melvin Purvis, the G-man who brought down John Dillinger and Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd. Johnson takes us from Washington's backrooms to a Midwestern cornfield, dramatizing the seductive allure of power and our own human capacity for both pettiness and grace. In Soul of A Whore, a lively cast of characters--faith healers, pimps, strippers, actual demons--converges, with unexpected...

Two plays--hilarious and searing in equal measure--by one of our most essential and original authors In his poetry, short stories, novels, and plays, the National Book Award-winning author Denis Johnson has explored the story of America--especially of the West, land of self-made men and self-perpetuating myths--with searing honesty and genuine sympathy. These two plays, written in verse at once hypnotic and clear, confirm his position as one of our great verbal stylists and a literary conscience for our times.In Soul of a Whore, a lively cast of characters--faith healers, pimps, strippers, actual demons--converge, with unexpected hilarity, as Bess Cassandra awaits execution for the murder of her infant daughter. Purvis's seven reverse-chronological scenes catalog the fall and rise of Melvin Purvis, the G-man who brought down John Dillinger and Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd. Johnson takes us from Washington's back rooms to a Midwestern cornfield, dramatizing the seductive allure of power and our own human capacity for both pettiness and grace. In these furiously entertaining, occasionally terrifying works, Johnson chronicles and questions America's myths, heroes, and everyday realities with verve and elegance, revealing himself once again to be at the height of his linguistic and insightful powers.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The star rating system is inadequate for my response to this collection of two plays Denis Johnson wrote for the San Francisco theater troupe Campo Santo during his residency there. Soul of a Whore is given prominent placement at the front of the book and the positive blurbs on the back refer specifically to it, but I'm less convinced of its worth. I found it a bit grating, heavy-handed, and embarrassing, though there are moments of great inspiration here, too, and it's possible seeing it as a theatrical performance could transform it into something special. I was a much bigger fan of the second play, Purvis, a reverse chronological historical fiction about the professional life of Melvin Purvis, the G-man responsible for the final hours of Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger who was fired by J. Edgar Hoover for getting too much media attention. Purvis spent his later years as a breakfast cereal pitchman and radio broadcaster before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1960 in what is still disputed as either suicide or accident. The heavily stylized dialogue and rowdy humor that seemed forced in Soul of a Whore reads beautifully here when placed in the mouths of larger-than-life historical figures Hoover, Purvis, LBJ, Clyde Tolson, Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger, and Baby Face Nelson in a truly pleasurable and empathetic dark comedy about crime, punishment, power, and bureaucracy.

[Sycobabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw Soul of Whore in 2003, Psycho's Never Dream in 2004, and a work in progress reading of Purvis in 2005 at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. Denis Johnson's Soul of Whore and Psycho's Never Dream were electric on the stage. Some of the most memorable theater I've ever seen. I've always liked Johnson as a novelist, but his ability to create characters living on the fringes of society is almost better suited for the stage. Seeing them as three dimensional beings is something to behold. The group of actors who were a part of Campo de Santo during those productions were fantastic. I can still recall their faces after all these years. My only regret is not seeing the earlier plays, had I known about them I would of been there jazzed out of my mind.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

_Purvis_ is probably my favorite play yet by Johnson. Garish, funny, irreverent, sad, and very committed to digging down into the muck and grime of America. I hope I have the chance to see a production sometime.

[Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soul of a Whore is ultimately one of my favourite plays. I ate up every last bit of it - the humor, sadness, blunt characters.

I recommend it be read twice, the first time for the blatant beauty, and a second time to truly consume the language and world fully.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I prefer his novels.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read!