Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Color of Darkness” as Want to Read:
Color of Darkness
by
When Purdy had difficulty publishing his first short stories in American magazines, he privately published his first two books, Don't Call Me by My Right Name and Other Stories and 63: Dream Palace, in 1956. Purdy sent copies of these first two books to writers he thought highly of, including the English poet Dame Edith Sitwell. She enthusiastically recommended Purdy's wor
...more
Hardcover, 175 pages
Published
February 19th 1975
by Greenwood Press
(first published 1957)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
Color of Darkness,
please sign up.
Be the first to ask a question about Color of Darkness
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
Showing 1-30
Start your review of Color of Darkness
63: Dream Palace novella - 4 1/2 stars
Pērdijs, iespējams, ir no tiem autoriem, kas visvairāk paliek prātā ar pirmo izlasīto grāmatu, un pārējais tad paliek kā forša zemsvītras piezīme iepazīšanās satricinājumam. Jo stāsti bija labi, taču, jā, tikšanās ar zināmu un interesantu draugu.
This is Purdy's first published work, collecting two previous private publications and two new stories, and it serves as an appropriately harrowing introdution to his work. Purdy does not seek to please his readers with familiar situations, common characters, and easy reading. Rather, his work is distressing and painful and, for many of us, uncomfortably close to our own realities. Using an ironic combination of deliberate exaggeration and frank descriptions of shockingly real human behavior, th
...more
Sep 08, 2014
Eldonfoil TH*E Whatever Champion
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
united-states
I'm glad I was patient with Mr. Purdy. I wasn't a big fan of the first book I read by him, and the stories in this collection started out painfully slow. After the first four I nearly put the book down, to be done with Purdy altogether. The stories seemed light, simple, and relationship-based with little tension. But the fifth story, "Why They Can't Tell You Why," about a ruthless mother, picked up the game. Subsequent stories gained a lot in intensity, loneliness, and ruin; kitchen conversation
...more
A little haunting. A little funny and drab. I can see why Purdy kind of gets forgotten and goes unnoticed. He's not big and loud. I really liked the way the first story, Color of Darkness, was written, it's definitely my favorite in the collection. The title story reminded me of Flannery O.
...more
Quite a surprise for a book published in the 1950's. A pleasant surprise. Speaking of topics that are still relevant and showing that for all our progress (?) maybe we haven't progressed that much.
...more
Another very hard book to find (all the good ones are). Great intro by Tony Tanner and an extremely well-written, important yet witty and still controversial collection pertaining to the civil rights movement.
What I learned: There's a line from Purdy's work to Gil Ott's ~Pact~ I hadn't realized. This is the real noir fiction.
...more
No, this is fucking egregious
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Readers also enjoyed
James Otis Purdy (July 17, 1914 – March 13, 2009) was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet, and playwright who, since his debut in 1956, published over a dozen novels, and many collections of poetry, short stories, and plays. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages and in 2013 his short stories were collected in The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy.
James Purdy's "da ...more
James Purdy's "da ...more
Related Articles
Diverse voices and sparkling debuts dominate today's contemporary short story collections. For this roundup, we took a look at the...
98 likes · 10 comments
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
