What do you think?
Rate this book
Color of Darkness
Anon
175 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1957
6 people are currently reading
247 people want to read
About the author
James Purdy
71 books135 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 15, 2011
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, the reader is forced to face the author head-on, and I admit that some will not be willing to do so.
The novella "63: Dream Palace", included as the last entry in the book, is a masterpiece. It tells of an unusual marriage, the contract with which it was begun, the husband who hides behind it, and a 19-year old boy and his younger brother who are changed forever.
If you are interested in social outcasts of many types, the disfuntional relationships they maintain, and the ultimately wasted lives that can result - all unblinkingly portrayed - you should read this collection immediately. Then, go on to read his many novels which further develop the themes of these stories into full-blown works of art. Those immediately wanting an unforgettable experience with perhaps his most exteme example of what "63: Dream Palace" introduces, should go directly to the novels Eustace Chisolm and the Works and Narrow Rooms. Both serve as shocking antidotes to the endless indistiguishable series of happily-ending coming out stories now being written. We should never forget the way brutal human nature could reassert itself, even in today's supposedly more tolerant society. It would take only one presidential election.
The novella "63: Dream Palace", included as the last entry in the book, is a masterpiece. It tells of an unusual marriage, the contract with which it was begun, the husband who hides behind it, and a 19-year old boy and his younger brother who are changed forever.
If you are interested in social outcasts of many types, the disfuntional relationships they maintain, and the ultimately wasted lives that can result - all unblinkingly portrayed - you should read this collection immediately. Then, go on to read his many novels which further develop the themes of these stories into full-blown works of art. Those immediately wanting an unforgettable experience with perhaps his most exteme example of what "63: Dream Palace" introduces, should go directly to the novels Eustace Chisolm and the Works and Narrow Rooms. Both serve as shocking antidotes to the endless indistiguishable series of happily-ending coming out stories now being written. We should never forget the way brutal human nature could reassert itself, even in today's supposedly more tolerant society. It would take only one presidential election.
October 29, 2020
63: Dream Palace novella - 4 1/2 stars
March 24, 2020
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.
October 13, 2015
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 conversations gone to hell. Most every story after that played on the torture and despair between two or three individuals, often close family members, and how one, in the greater social setting, despised or sought to control the other.
Purdy's eye is keen: these are not stories that he simply creates from the imagination, but ones based, to some extent, on what he has lived and observed. There is a strong, general sense of Anderson and O'Connor in the stories: of a time when America has plenty of pickles, but not much on morals and meaning, unless they're the ones that are programmed or wish to dominate others.
The book ends with a bang via a 60 page novella that shares the collection's title. Nowhere more Flannery-esque than here, there are odd and suspect critters who we don't know what to make of, who don't know what to make of themselves. But there is general distrust, fever, and confusion, the results of finding society has no answer for death and chaos; gods that had us wishing and knowing are now dead. Not to mention the lead character, Fenton Riddleway, has just moved in from Ronceverte, West Virginia. Or that the names and the conversations and curious prodding of the characters have a little John Cowper Powys feel as well...
Purdy's eye is keen: these are not stories that he simply creates from the imagination, but ones based, to some extent, on what he has lived and observed. There is a strong, general sense of Anderson and O'Connor in the stories: of a time when America has plenty of pickles, but not much on morals and meaning, unless they're the ones that are programmed or wish to dominate others.
The book ends with a bang via a 60 page novella that shares the collection's title. Nowhere more Flannery-esque than here, there are odd and suspect critters who we don't know what to make of, who don't know what to make of themselves. But there is general distrust, fever, and confusion, the results of finding society has no answer for death and chaos; gods that had us wishing and knowing are now dead. Not to mention the lead character, Fenton Riddleway, has just moved in from Ronceverte, West Virginia. Or that the names and the conversations and curious prodding of the characters have a little John Cowper Powys feel as well...
August 19, 2025
I read these stories in the collected short stories of James Purdy and they are some of his finest. When most, but not all, of these stories were published under the title '63 Dream Palace' the Times Literary Supplement wrote:
"This very considerable novelist and short story writer is in the highest rank of contemporary American writers...Mr. Purdy is a superb writer, using all the fires of the heart and the crystallising powers of the brain."
That was in 1957 - and it is as true now as it was then. Fifty two years later James Purdy died as one of the greatest writers in English of the 20th century. Don't allow another day to go by without discovering this wonderful writer.
"This very considerable novelist and short story writer is in the highest rank of contemporary American writers...Mr. Purdy is a superb writer, using all the fires of the heart and the crystallising powers of the brain."
That was in 1957 - and it is as true now as it was then. Fifty two years later James Purdy died as one of the greatest writers in English of the 20th century. Don't allow another day to go by without discovering this wonderful writer.
July 15, 2007
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.
March 19, 2009
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.
August 11, 2020
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.
October 7, 2022
Heir to Sherwood Anderson and the subliminal influence behind a whole complex of contemporary American fiction. His power is unsettling. Not a writer to be read cavalierly.
Read
April 1, 2024whoa!
February 16, 2025
“63: Dream Palace: Here, faggot 1 picks up faggot 2 and brings him to a faggot-loving rich mother hen, who collapses from drink shortly after. Faggot 2 is later picked up by faggot 3. After a marijuana jag, faggot 2 leaves faggot 3 and murders faggot 4. his brother, who is the most helpless, crib-ridden pancake of all.” Alfred Sundel, “The Limp-Wrist School”, New Leader, June 1961
They don’t write reviews like that anymore. Nice to see how well received James Purdy was when this collection, originally published in the UK, was reprinted in America.
The aggressively non-limp-wristed Alfred Sundel drew sneering comparison with Louis-Ferdinand Céline - I writer I admire - so Purdy’s first commercially published book was always going to be a winner for me. I dimly recall reading it a long, long time ago when Purdy was included among the newly discovered writers of “black humour”, a tag that’s thankfully fallen out of fashion, but all I could remember was that the stories were sharp, bleak, and effective.
The novella “63: Dream Palace” is the stand-out piece. With its two West Virginians lost in the Big City, It has some of the atmosphere and hopelessness of James Leo Herlihy’s later Midnight Cowboy – and indeed Purdy and Herlihy corresponded and admired each other’s work, so it may well have been an influence. Of the short stories, “Why Can’t They Tell You Why?” packs a savage punch.
Good opening collection. Must re-read more Purdy.
They don’t write reviews like that anymore. Nice to see how well received James Purdy was when this collection, originally published in the UK, was reprinted in America.
The aggressively non-limp-wristed Alfred Sundel drew sneering comparison with Louis-Ferdinand Céline - I writer I admire - so Purdy’s first commercially published book was always going to be a winner for me. I dimly recall reading it a long, long time ago when Purdy was included among the newly discovered writers of “black humour”, a tag that’s thankfully fallen out of fashion, but all I could remember was that the stories were sharp, bleak, and effective.
The novella “63: Dream Palace” is the stand-out piece. With its two West Virginians lost in the Big City, It has some of the atmosphere and hopelessness of James Leo Herlihy’s later Midnight Cowboy – and indeed Purdy and Herlihy corresponded and admired each other’s work, so it may well have been an influence. Of the short stories, “Why Can’t They Tell You Why?” packs a savage punch.
Good opening collection. Must re-read more Purdy.
Want to read
August 28, 2022Read so far:
*Color of darkness --
*You may safely gaze --
*Don't call me by my right name --
*Eventide --
*Why can't they tell you why? --
*Man and wife --
*You reach for your hat --
*A good woman --
Plan now to attend --
Sound of talking --
*Cutting edge --
63, dream palace --
***
*Daddy wolf --
*Encore --
*Everything under the sun --
*Goodnight, sweetheart --
*Some of these days --
*Lily's party --
*Summer tidings --
*Color of darkness --
*You may safely gaze --
*Don't call me by my right name --
*Eventide --
*Why can't they tell you why? --
*Man and wife --
*You reach for your hat --
*A good woman --
Plan now to attend --
Sound of talking --
*Cutting edge --
63, dream palace --
***
*Daddy wolf --
*Encore --
*Everything under the sun --
*Goodnight, sweetheart --
*Some of these days --
*Lily's party --
*Summer tidings --
November 14, 2017
No, this is fucking egregious
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews