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Dans le creux de sa main
A powerful novel by James Purdy set in the 1920s Midwest. Purdy explores the eruption of a scandal in a tight-knit community, when a Native American claims the parentage of a white couples son.
336 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1986
31 people want to read
About the author
James Purdy
73 books142 followersJames 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 16, 2016
As they bathed themselves in the hot water and soaped themselves with a kind of pumice-like substance, Chad observed with a growing terror that the redskinned savages were all turning into white men with very fair skin, and without their wigs, had hair like corn silk, and sky-blue eyes.
I once read an article that explained the popularity of Americans claiming Native American heritage as a way to let oneself off the hook for a part in national ancestry of tear trails and singing river blood. In the days before heritage was good for being stuck up on the internet there was a letting off the cosmic hook by having a son. My blood might outlast the meaning of life even if I just screw and get wasted. Someone loves me if the world does not. Someone to love when I won’t love the world.
The little lord apparent of “I don’t know” smirks slips through his teacher Bess Lyle’s horrored gaze into a different car every day with the big Indian. Chad once thoughtlessly belonged to his young adult sister the actress in their empty mansion (poor people in this story have servants and schmancy clothes so money only really means not wanting to pay). His long haired dream-boat power is drifting from questions of what are you doing with Him, from an upbringing of loyalty only to who they are with. I had a feeling if no one ever asked what he was doing with that big Indian he would never have left with him. They were rehearsing his abduction as a kind of prophecy fulfillment from the teacher’s accusations all along. Talking about nothing much. The bigger man only passenger eyes him until he takes him, like Chad waiting for anything to happen he repeats his signs. Decatur fathered Chad so randomly I could believe the universe just provided him with his will to live like he wants.
He’s not the only lonely person in the world. Bess won't ever forget a glimpse of Decatur's naked body. Yellow Brook is too small for anyone to live. I really want to blame how they don’t know anyone for why they can’t think past just sex and kids. The Indian kid with nothing until he comes back with war medals and money that is nothing to him without a son. Have you ever lived down expectations of what another did when they were a couple of years older than you are/were now? Like if your mom was fooling around at fourteen doesn't mean you should be punished for it too, right? I had the feeling that they were looking for ways to make it easier to never trust Chad. Age is such a small thing to reduce anyone to but then so is everything else they did. Decatur comes back might as well have never left. How awful to come back after a life and it’s so small that you never left. Purdy is great at this slow suffocation.
What would a son do for lives like these? The red-headed Canadian purveyor of wax dolls also wants a son and he kisses Chad on the lips. I felt like they would have to touch Chad in another way than push him towards Decatur because he looked like him and their fervor was a strange copy. I’ve never loved someone just because they were related to me by blood but it is usual enough. Why didn't Chad question any of the other men either. This is not easy to accept in this story. I’ve never wanted to keep anyone’s baby like I’ve heard so many women coo and aah. Chad would have to be the children they sprung from pictures in magazines because I can’t see any of these men ever being with a woman. Theirs is all sloppy drunk confessions not belonging to any daytime. A scarred Indian man cuts him on the run from the boys home for Indian boys (the only one to make a success was murdered short of a bright career in prize fighting. I wanted to know more about this teacher’s devotion to this one student. She must have been as lonely as Bess and rooted for students in a less possessive way than those kissing men) to the elusive big chiefs (because adults tell him to). Chad is this man’s ideal son because he is handsome. Maybe if this was The Never-Ending Story the world would end when Atreyu’s long hair doesn’t make it for love of his horse. The mad-man, the horse-backed erlking blood grandfather oozes white hair and “I am not your son!” revulsion Luke Skywalker would lose his other hand for. These unrelatable Indian men pass through Chad’s life like bad things he wouldn’t stop himself from talking about later. I think I liked that Purdy made it this kind of horror to be vomited after the fact, rather than just a bunch of wacky people Chad meets. Really not loving the repeated son theme, though. I don’t think it reinforced Decatur as his real dad at all, or the dream of Chad as a son. It only made me feel lonelier that no one loved any of the women in this book at all. Because they weren’t sons? Decatur’s grandfather horrified me but not because I thought he could ever get his hands on anyone. What good is son love, either, then. I wish I wondered about what Decatur’s outskirts of this madness childhood was like. Maybe Bess’s enduring fascination with Decatur was founded on a real person than just “A man has got to have a son” running away. Did she watch him on days he wished his gut sickness would forget the mean old man.
Birth-certificate daddy is a waiting room figure. Bess knew before Chad’s mother knew that athletic and blonde Lewis Coultas wasn’t his real father. Birth certificate daddy Lewis was too good looking to make love to again. He stayed away all year, every year, until the rumors of what if he found out were a self fulfilling wish. I imagined Lewis to look like one of those “good looking” guys on a soap opera, or a male model that you get used to being good looking only because everyone says so. He looks good on paper like money. A crooked finger leading willing skirts and mother-in-law to debt. I was loving this book until Lewis kidnapped Chad. We’ll buy you some new clothes. Plush carpets and sparkling chandeliers to walk out on the bill kinds of hotels. His jewel thief sisters are always kissing his naked stiffness. I hated even more than their orgies the ancient private detective they insist on hiring when Chad kidnaps himself. The purple haired poofy man won’t shut up about his puffed glories in-law. If I could enter a book and murder a character in a cabin fever defense he’d be a contender. His young orphan wife is as bad as the sisters. I found them as sexy as mental patients who would masturbate in front of anyone whenever their restless fingers found a button. Chad’s accounting to the court of public opinion is haunted by their red breasts and naked Lewis but I found them boring in a gross out kind of way. I went from thinking ‘In the Hollow of His Hand” was great to wishing it would be over already any time the stupid detective appeared. I don’t know what to make about the casual cruelty, either. A woman Chad boards with for the night beats her mute daughter’s faces. I wanted to know if they communicated with each other in other rooms the way Chad and Melissa did. Did their mother know this and wished to belong too but gets stuck in clinging to her own mother's vanishing love.
So the sterile erectile cop brings bloodshed and events that happen. Chad’s adventures feel like a dreamy constellation shape in the sky you know means it’s a ferocious bear in some cultures but it never led you home when you were lost.
I love the way Purdy describes the intangible becoming inescapable (when he’s not introducing random weird men to kiss all over Chad), though. Lewis talks to admire himself but the image of Decatur survives in his head to come to him anyway. Purdy compared it to a photographer not knowing what they had captured until they develop it later in their dark room. That was great. He’s good at doing the gut feelings of shark swimming emotion vampires. Eva probably spent her entire life petting herself but there’s still a little girl in there who was never really loved by anybody. It’s not fair that in this world only men and their damn sons get love.
I once read an article that explained the popularity of Americans claiming Native American heritage as a way to let oneself off the hook for a part in national ancestry of tear trails and singing river blood. In the days before heritage was good for being stuck up on the internet there was a letting off the cosmic hook by having a son. My blood might outlast the meaning of life even if I just screw and get wasted. Someone loves me if the world does not. Someone to love when I won’t love the world.
The little lord apparent of “I don’t know” smirks slips through his teacher Bess Lyle’s horrored gaze into a different car every day with the big Indian. Chad once thoughtlessly belonged to his young adult sister the actress in their empty mansion (poor people in this story have servants and schmancy clothes so money only really means not wanting to pay). His long haired dream-boat power is drifting from questions of what are you doing with Him, from an upbringing of loyalty only to who they are with. I had a feeling if no one ever asked what he was doing with that big Indian he would never have left with him. They were rehearsing his abduction as a kind of prophecy fulfillment from the teacher’s accusations all along. Talking about nothing much. The bigger man only passenger eyes him until he takes him, like Chad waiting for anything to happen he repeats his signs. Decatur fathered Chad so randomly I could believe the universe just provided him with his will to live like he wants.
He’s not the only lonely person in the world. Bess won't ever forget a glimpse of Decatur's naked body. Yellow Brook is too small for anyone to live. I really want to blame how they don’t know anyone for why they can’t think past just sex and kids. The Indian kid with nothing until he comes back with war medals and money that is nothing to him without a son. Have you ever lived down expectations of what another did when they were a couple of years older than you are/were now? Like if your mom was fooling around at fourteen doesn't mean you should be punished for it too, right? I had the feeling that they were looking for ways to make it easier to never trust Chad. Age is such a small thing to reduce anyone to but then so is everything else they did. Decatur comes back might as well have never left. How awful to come back after a life and it’s so small that you never left. Purdy is great at this slow suffocation.
What would a son do for lives like these? The red-headed Canadian purveyor of wax dolls also wants a son and he kisses Chad on the lips. I felt like they would have to touch Chad in another way than push him towards Decatur because he looked like him and their fervor was a strange copy. I’ve never loved someone just because they were related to me by blood but it is usual enough. Why didn't Chad question any of the other men either. This is not easy to accept in this story. I’ve never wanted to keep anyone’s baby like I’ve heard so many women coo and aah. Chad would have to be the children they sprung from pictures in magazines because I can’t see any of these men ever being with a woman. Theirs is all sloppy drunk confessions not belonging to any daytime. A scarred Indian man cuts him on the run from the boys home for Indian boys (the only one to make a success was murdered short of a bright career in prize fighting. I wanted to know more about this teacher’s devotion to this one student. She must have been as lonely as Bess and rooted for students in a less possessive way than those kissing men) to the elusive big chiefs (because adults tell him to). Chad is this man’s ideal son because he is handsome. Maybe if this was The Never-Ending Story the world would end when Atreyu’s long hair doesn’t make it for love of his horse. The mad-man, the horse-backed erlking blood grandfather oozes white hair and “I am not your son!” revulsion Luke Skywalker would lose his other hand for. These unrelatable Indian men pass through Chad’s life like bad things he wouldn’t stop himself from talking about later. I think I liked that Purdy made it this kind of horror to be vomited after the fact, rather than just a bunch of wacky people Chad meets. Really not loving the repeated son theme, though. I don’t think it reinforced Decatur as his real dad at all, or the dream of Chad as a son. It only made me feel lonelier that no one loved any of the women in this book at all. Because they weren’t sons? Decatur’s grandfather horrified me but not because I thought he could ever get his hands on anyone. What good is son love, either, then. I wish I wondered about what Decatur’s outskirts of this madness childhood was like. Maybe Bess’s enduring fascination with Decatur was founded on a real person than just “A man has got to have a son” running away. Did she watch him on days he wished his gut sickness would forget the mean old man.
Birth-certificate daddy is a waiting room figure. Bess knew before Chad’s mother knew that athletic and blonde Lewis Coultas wasn’t his real father. Birth certificate daddy Lewis was too good looking to make love to again. He stayed away all year, every year, until the rumors of what if he found out were a self fulfilling wish. I imagined Lewis to look like one of those “good looking” guys on a soap opera, or a male model that you get used to being good looking only because everyone says so. He looks good on paper like money. A crooked finger leading willing skirts and mother-in-law to debt. I was loving this book until Lewis kidnapped Chad. We’ll buy you some new clothes. Plush carpets and sparkling chandeliers to walk out on the bill kinds of hotels. His jewel thief sisters are always kissing his naked stiffness. I hated even more than their orgies the ancient private detective they insist on hiring when Chad kidnaps himself. The purple haired poofy man won’t shut up about his puffed glories in-law. If I could enter a book and murder a character in a cabin fever defense he’d be a contender. His young orphan wife is as bad as the sisters. I found them as sexy as mental patients who would masturbate in front of anyone whenever their restless fingers found a button. Chad’s accounting to the court of public opinion is haunted by their red breasts and naked Lewis but I found them boring in a gross out kind of way. I went from thinking ‘In the Hollow of His Hand” was great to wishing it would be over already any time the stupid detective appeared. I don’t know what to make about the casual cruelty, either. A woman Chad boards with for the night beats her mute daughter’s faces. I wanted to know if they communicated with each other in other rooms the way Chad and Melissa did. Did their mother know this and wished to belong too but gets stuck in clinging to her own mother's vanishing love.
So the sterile erectile cop brings bloodshed and events that happen. Chad’s adventures feel like a dreamy constellation shape in the sky you know means it’s a ferocious bear in some cultures but it never led you home when you were lost.
I love the way Purdy describes the intangible becoming inescapable (when he’s not introducing random weird men to kiss all over Chad), though. Lewis talks to admire himself but the image of Decatur survives in his head to come to him anyway. Purdy compared it to a photographer not knowing what they had captured until they develop it later in their dark room. That was great. He’s good at doing the gut feelings of shark swimming emotion vampires. Eva probably spent her entire life petting herself but there’s still a little girl in there who was never really loved by anybody. It’s not fair that in this world only men and their damn sons get love.
May 23, 2019
Makes me think, in ways not to be specified in a “Spoilers”-free review, of an anti-THE SEARCHERS — vis-a-vis the notion of a “captive narrative.” Let’s just say that Natalie Wood winds up home, in THE SEARCHERS, and it’s adjudged a good thing; author Purdy’s young protagonist Chad does not.
Chad’s biological father, a long-haired Great War veteran of Ojibwa background, seeks Chad out in ways that are perhaps not eroticized. Perhaps. The 1922 midwestern town is certainly, in any case, set as a-flutter by him as a cluster of William Inge matrons. The reader must deal with this. The reader must also deal with a flamboyant detective and a financial mountebank (insert RAGTIME reference), neo-Pentecostal scalawags who suffer for their enthusiasms (insert HUCKLEBERRY FINN reference), loose women, gun battles, and various stray lowlifes.
The novel is extravagant and funny and doesn’t go out of its way to “make nice” with the reader. I quite liked it.
Chad’s biological father, a long-haired Great War veteran of Ojibwa background, seeks Chad out in ways that are perhaps not eroticized. Perhaps. The 1922 midwestern town is certainly, in any case, set as a-flutter by him as a cluster of William Inge matrons. The reader must deal with this. The reader must also deal with a flamboyant detective and a financial mountebank (insert RAGTIME reference), neo-Pentecostal scalawags who suffer for their enthusiasms (insert HUCKLEBERRY FINN reference), loose women, gun battles, and various stray lowlifes.
The novel is extravagant and funny and doesn’t go out of its way to “make nice” with the reader. I quite liked it.
January 1, 2021
Trudged two-thirds of the way through before giving completely up
March 2, 2009
A man comes home to claim his biological son who looks exactly like him, although no one seemed to notice that little fact, including the man who thought he was the boy's father. If you can accept that plot point, you can accept any of the crazy twists in this story. This is Purdy writing comedy. I'd call it more bizarre than funny.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews