Moe's Villa and Other Stories

by James Purdy

Book by Purdy, James

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

James Otis Purdy was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet, and playwright who, from 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.
He has been praised by writers as diverse as Edward Albee, James M. Cain, Lillian Hellman, Francis King, Marianne Moore, Dorothy Parker, Dame Edith Sitwell, Terry Southern, Gore Vidal (who described Purdy as "an authentic American genius"), Jonathan Franzen (who called him, in Farther Away, "one of the most undervalued and underread writers in America"), A.N. Wilson, and both Jane Bowles and Paul Bowles.
Purdy was the recipient of the Morton Dauwen Zabel Fiction Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1993) and was nominated for the 1985 PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel On Glory's Course (1984). In addition, he won two Guggenheim Fellowships (1958 and 1962), and grants from the Ford Foundation (1961), and Rockefeller Foundation.
He worked as an interpreter, and lectured in Europe with the United States Information Agency.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Purdy is one of my favourite writers and I approach writing a review of anything he writes with hesitation because I don't know how to begin with a writer I think utterly unique and wonderful. I would give this collection and anything else he wrote more than five stars but what can I tell you of this collection. Although it is not original I really cannot do better than to quote what other writers who I admire greatly have said about James Purdy:

"A writer of the highest rank in originality, insight and power..." Dorothy Parker

"An authentic American genius..." Gore Vidal

"The closest to a classic American colloquial...Paul Bowles

"A magnificent simplicity..." Angus Wilson

"A small perpetually radioactive particle of genius irradiates...(everything) he has produced over the years..." Francis King

Finally I can only remark on the sheer variety of the stories which have everything from talking cats managing an Opera singers career, a cold with her dragon and and the proprietor of a gambling establishment which also acts as surrogate home for wayward and unloved boys. None of them are anything but unique. Honestly if you don't know Purdy's work then I beg to sample anyone of his novels or collections and experience something very special.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Purdy's writing has been described as archetypal. He commented that "Though my plays are really American myths and the language and characters are very American, they are not only about America. They just happen to take place here." That they happen in America and feel very American on the surface still allows room for depths of meaning that suggest the archetypal. I am reminded of the southern Gothic world of Flannery O'Connor without the religion. His thoroughly idiosyncratic writing leaves trails of peculiar, odd, eccentric characters that make their way through a world that is a skewed version of every town. His every town is usually more akin to David Lynch than Thornton Wilder.
I first encountered Purdy through his mysterious, eerie vision of Eustace Chisholm, but soon graduated to the smaller works like Malcolm and The Nephew where his focus was more acute. This collection includes twelve new stories; from fairy tales about an opera diva whose mega-stardom is managed shrewdly by her talking cat to the little girl who runs off with a fire-breathing dragon to eat turtle soup; from a bizarre account of a desperate husband whose obsession over his wayward ex-wife leads to his fixation on a rare white dove to a visit to Moe’s Villa, a private mansion doubling as a gambling casino where lonely boys are taught the art of poker by the Native American proprietor.
Gore Vidal called him "an authentic American genius". For Vidal, himself given to the fantastic, Purdy's stories contained "lost or losing golden ephebes. This collection is a welcome feast for fans of Purdy, as well as a nice taste for newcomers.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Purdy is a gifted storyteller who specializes in giving voice to the lost, depraved and grief-stricken characters that inhabit his particular world. Through the prism of his vision Purdy refracts our world into unsettling, mystical, magical tales of talking cats, white blackbirds, nanogerenian matriarchs and teenage wunderkinds. The canvas Purdy paints on has no boundary; the themes he chooses to embrace are the modern day condition of loneliness, the inability of people to connect, the depravity that is the outcome of loss. At some point in the future Purdy will undeniably be recognized as the equal of Edgar Allan Poe and Paul Bowles when it comes to the short story genre. His tales are reminiscent of William Faulkner and Carson McCullers, two other surveyors of the literary territory known as Southern Gothic. Those who know Purdy love his quirky poetic style and offbeat characters. An acquired taste to be sure, but one well worth acquiring.

[Djrmel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has been my "fill-in" book for the last month, the book I read when I've ran out of other books or don't have time to start a new book. That I was able to stop reading it whenever something different came along tells that there wasn't much to engage me in the collection. It's Purdy's most recently published, and all through it, I was wondering if his reputation stopped his editor from doing their job. I still think Purdy at his worst is better than a LOT of what gets published today, but it's sad when a favorite writer doesn't quite hit the mark.