63: Dream Palace. Selected stories, 1956-1987

by James Purdy

Book by Purdy, James

Genres: Short Stories

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1956

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

[Simon A. Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Purdy is a very skilled writer who deserves more recognition for his gifts. He has been labeled as "controversial," but for me that has always been a good thing. These are quiet little heart stopping tales about love loss, redemption and identity. As a gay white man from Ohio, Purdy adroitly writes about black Americans, elderly women and wayward youth. He is a fearless writer and for that I commend him.

[Djrmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

27 short stories in all. My favorite was the title piece, a dark story about a brother who's not cut out to be the caretaker of his sickly younger brother. By the time you realize how the story has to end, you can't look away. There's also a bittersweet story about an young boy and his grandfather, Home By Dark, written so well it was like being right there on the front porch with the characters.