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Eustace Chisholm and the Works
A literary cult hero of major proportions, James Purdy's exquisitely surreal fiction—Tennessee Williams meets William S. Burroughs—has been populated for more than forty years by social outcasts living in crisis and longing for love. His acclaimed first novel, Malcolm (1959), won praise from writers as diverse as Dame Edith Sitwell, Dorothy Parker, and Gore Vidal, while his later works, from the award-winning In a Shallow Grave (1976) to Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue (1998), influenced new generations of authors. Eustace Chisholm and the Works, a 1967 novel that became a gay classic, is an especially outspoken book among the author's controversial body of work. Purdy recalls that Eustace Chisholm and the Works—named one of the Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels of the 20th Century—outraged the New York literary establishment. More than breaking out of the pre-Stonewall closet, however, the book liberated its author and readers can be grateful for that.
300 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
29 people are currently reading
1041 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.
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April 9, 2012
"I am a public mop-handle, they have all of me, and are planning to sever anything they cannot freely manipulate. Since I have lost all shame here in Mississippi and since you have never had any, and I know you blab everything the minute you hear it, for though you are people say brilliant, you are the lowest species of human being ever crawled on earth, and you will admit this, for if there is one thing in you that distinguishes you from slime it is you are honest, this makes you I imagine, a man. I admire the trait and you are the one I can write to as a consequence."
Eustace Chisholm aka Ace aka the hyena who learns their names outside the bear deserted camp sites aka the palm reader aka the psalm reader aka the poet and the cursed. He could be like a wise old owl with this misspelled signs and days of the week in the love sick wood. It's always Thursday I don't care about you and tomorrow is always Friday I'm In Love. There are also lessons in attic Greek in the tree house. Young Amos Ratcliffe aka Rat alias starved for love alias no one's son alias object of chestly desire. His landlord Daniel Haws goes by Daniel Haws, white man and whore fucker extraordinaire. Alias everyone's bitch and man in love with boy.
Ace would turn the cards in the deck they had to play and would say play it while you can. It may not be love forever. I'm with Ace. The two should have fucked while the fucking was good. Daniel couldn't tell Amos he loved him and Amos couldn't meet his eyes unless they were inverted and white with desire to be elsewhere. The non-themselves submitted to anyone else who could have them. Black with shame, blue with waiting and red with tragedy.
I'm with Ace. I'm way too much with Ace. Eustace Chisholm and the works aka I'm in trouble aka I've been cursed with spiritualism of another aka it isn't really telling it like it is when it dies in its own denied step. You may have noticed that I really like making Winnie the Pooh and Alice analogies about stuff. I give myself very good advice and very seldom follow it sob sob sob and a stuffed animal menagerie of tell me all your sob sob sob. Ace's fate scares me! What kind of a keeping warm by the fire of others chance do you have if they throw themselves onto the fire and sob sob sob no one is taking Alice's very good advice? Books don't listen to me either.
I like James Purdy. Eustace is my second Purdy in two days. The first was Malcolm. I can see some similarities between the two without having to stretch my good advice of sell your ass and make some money too much. Malcolm had Mr. Cox who keeps his days of the week where he wants them (too bad there are holidays). Malcolm had Malcolm who carried his hermitudes inside himself to all the other living in the shit that is life bottles to avoid having his uncorked and sos finally read. I like to read multiple books by an author and I love it when I can get a sense carrying over to the others. Daniel's r.e.m on feet and Malcolm's only happy when it's never morning. I knew the lack of eye contact. Letters of life and there are no small parts, only small actors. The end of Eustace hurts. A great poet once asked when will you accept yourself. It hurts too much when that acceptance is saying goodbye and not asking anymore. I think I like a whole lot what I see in James Purdy that there's more than one danger in this denying who you really are. You could open your arms to dreamless sleep. Forget palm readers and I see a tall and dark handsome stranger. My stethoscope says the heart of Eustace Chisholm and the Works is never surrender and never say die. Sob, sob, sob. Don't be afraid to look even if what you see aren't really anything but stupid chicory droppings at the bottom of your cup. Sob, sob, sob into my cup because that was fucking lame.
Eustace Chisholm aka Ace aka the hyena who learns their names outside the bear deserted camp sites aka the palm reader aka the psalm reader aka the poet and the cursed. He could be like a wise old owl with this misspelled signs and days of the week in the love sick wood. It's always Thursday I don't care about you and tomorrow is always Friday I'm In Love. There are also lessons in attic Greek in the tree house. Young Amos Ratcliffe aka Rat alias starved for love alias no one's son alias object of chestly desire. His landlord Daniel Haws goes by Daniel Haws, white man and whore fucker extraordinaire. Alias everyone's bitch and man in love with boy.
Ace would turn the cards in the deck they had to play and would say play it while you can. It may not be love forever. I'm with Ace. The two should have fucked while the fucking was good. Daniel couldn't tell Amos he loved him and Amos couldn't meet his eyes unless they were inverted and white with desire to be elsewhere. The non-themselves submitted to anyone else who could have them. Black with shame, blue with waiting and red with tragedy.
I'm with Ace. I'm way too much with Ace. Eustace Chisholm and the works aka I'm in trouble aka I've been cursed with spiritualism of another aka it isn't really telling it like it is when it dies in its own denied step. You may have noticed that I really like making Winnie the Pooh and Alice analogies about stuff. I give myself very good advice and very seldom follow it sob sob sob and a stuffed animal menagerie of tell me all your sob sob sob. Ace's fate scares me! What kind of a keeping warm by the fire of others chance do you have if they throw themselves onto the fire and sob sob sob no one is taking Alice's very good advice? Books don't listen to me either.
I like James Purdy. Eustace is my second Purdy in two days. The first was Malcolm. I can see some similarities between the two without having to stretch my good advice of sell your ass and make some money too much. Malcolm had Mr. Cox who keeps his days of the week where he wants them (too bad there are holidays). Malcolm had Malcolm who carried his hermitudes inside himself to all the other living in the shit that is life bottles to avoid having his uncorked and sos finally read. I like to read multiple books by an author and I love it when I can get a sense carrying over to the others. Daniel's r.e.m on feet and Malcolm's only happy when it's never morning. I knew the lack of eye contact. Letters of life and there are no small parts, only small actors. The end of Eustace hurts. A great poet once asked when will you accept yourself. It hurts too much when that acceptance is saying goodbye and not asking anymore. I think I like a whole lot what I see in James Purdy that there's more than one danger in this denying who you really are. You could open your arms to dreamless sleep. Forget palm readers and I see a tall and dark handsome stranger. My stethoscope says the heart of Eustace Chisholm and the Works is never surrender and never say die. Sob, sob, sob. Don't be afraid to look even if what you see aren't really anything but stupid chicory droppings at the bottom of your cup. Sob, sob, sob into my cup because that was fucking lame.
August 6, 2019
Bel romanzo. Non conosciuto e valorizzato come meriterebbe. Di una tristezza a fatica masticabile e ancor più a fatica digeribile, dopo. È breve e scorrevole nonostante una traduzione inqualificabile, ma bisogna prendersi delle pause e spendere molti sospironi per finirlo.
C’entra, si, “il volto triste dell’America” (alla Anderson o alla Yates, per capirci), ma non bisogna farsi fuorviare da questa chiave. È vero che nella genesi stessa degli Stati Uniti, segnata dai rudi costumi del nomadismo verso la frontiera, la compressione fino alla demonizzazione della sfera dei sentimenti (una sorta di analfabetismo emozionale), è stata qualcosa che ha inciso profondamente. E insieme al puritanesimo anglosassone ha poi sorretto l’etica capitalistica del lavoro, della competizione e dell’individualismo elevato a religione, fino ad arrivare al managerialismo suicida di oggi. Il carico di sofferenze che ha prodotto scalando nelle generazioni è spaventoso e la letteratura americana l’ha scavato a fondo.
Ma questo romanzo, per tematica e sensibilità, va al di là della dimensione americana. Perché è soprattutto un romanzo sui non amati e su quelli che comunque non si riconoscono il diritto di amare. Al suo centro c’è il grande tema dell’amore vissuto come una malattia; come un inganno in cui non ci si riconosce il diritto di cadere; come una richiesta destinata a rimanere inevasa; come un bisogno ineliminabile e intollerabile, che denuncia una debolezza inconfessabile e può portare solo alla vergogna di un rifiuto.
Altro rischio da evitare è prenderlo come un libro sulla pena di vivere l’omosessualità. E rinchiuderlo in quella tematica li. Al contrario il fatto che il contesto specifico sia quello dell’amore omosessuale aggiunge ulteriormente universalità al modo in cui il tema dell’amore malato viene sviluppato. È una cosa apparentemente forse paradossale; in realtà è proprio così ed è forse la più notevole qualità del soggetto del romanzo. D’altronde, si capisce il perché. Nell’amore omosessuale la differenza di genere non c’è, non c’è la biologica diversità tra uomo e donna ad inquinare la corretta declinazione di un tema che in effetti prescinde il genere e che riguarda qualcosa di profondamente rannicchiato nel fondo di un certo tipo di mente umana, al di là della differenza di sesso. Anzi il contesto omosessuale (in un’epoca in cui più di oggi era un tabù innominabile e rabbiosamente perseguitato) fa emergere meglio la sostanza e le radici appunto universali della incapacità di sentirsi nel diritto di chiedere e ricevere amore; della impossibilità di dare e ricevere comunicazioni con l’altro nella maniera più profonda e completa che sia a disposizione dell’essere umano e cioè con la mente e con il corpo insieme.
Quando si parla di questo tema è sempre centrale il ruolo delle madri. In questo romanzo sono figure dolenti e sconfitte, forse più dei loro figli. Sono vissute da loro come marziane da cui fuggire, a cui bisogna nascondere la verità più gelosamente che a tutti gli altri. Chiedono cose incomprensibili, motivate più dalla loro paura, dal loro bisogno di riconoscimento e dalla ricerca di appagamento delle loro esigenze affettive e sociali, che da quelle di accompagnare e custodire le fragilità dei loro figli.
Ultima cosa. Ho trovato azzeccatissima la scelta di individuare nel contesto militare, nella logica del comandare-obbedire che sfocia nella violenza brutale e letale, lo sbocco finale di tutto il dolore che il rigetto dell’amore comporta. Se c’è un ambiente estremo ed aberrante sotto quell’aspetto è proprio quello militare.
Un romanzo molto forte, anche vivace e brillante nella prima parte, ma è la seconda, quella più dura, la più bella. In tutte e due domina quel personaggio straordinario che è Eustace Chisholm.
A indagarci attorno, Purdy, più leggi, più scavi e più incuriosisce. Un personaggio anomalo, contraddittorio su tanti aspetti, interessante come pochi altri. Per chi volesse saperne di più qui trova qualcosa
https://scarabooks.blogspot.com/2019/...
C’entra, si, “il volto triste dell’America” (alla Anderson o alla Yates, per capirci), ma non bisogna farsi fuorviare da questa chiave. È vero che nella genesi stessa degli Stati Uniti, segnata dai rudi costumi del nomadismo verso la frontiera, la compressione fino alla demonizzazione della sfera dei sentimenti (una sorta di analfabetismo emozionale), è stata qualcosa che ha inciso profondamente. E insieme al puritanesimo anglosassone ha poi sorretto l’etica capitalistica del lavoro, della competizione e dell’individualismo elevato a religione, fino ad arrivare al managerialismo suicida di oggi. Il carico di sofferenze che ha prodotto scalando nelle generazioni è spaventoso e la letteratura americana l’ha scavato a fondo.
Ma questo romanzo, per tematica e sensibilità, va al di là della dimensione americana. Perché è soprattutto un romanzo sui non amati e su quelli che comunque non si riconoscono il diritto di amare. Al suo centro c’è il grande tema dell’amore vissuto come una malattia; come un inganno in cui non ci si riconosce il diritto di cadere; come una richiesta destinata a rimanere inevasa; come un bisogno ineliminabile e intollerabile, che denuncia una debolezza inconfessabile e può portare solo alla vergogna di un rifiuto.
Altro rischio da evitare è prenderlo come un libro sulla pena di vivere l’omosessualità. E rinchiuderlo in quella tematica li. Al contrario il fatto che il contesto specifico sia quello dell’amore omosessuale aggiunge ulteriormente universalità al modo in cui il tema dell’amore malato viene sviluppato. È una cosa apparentemente forse paradossale; in realtà è proprio così ed è forse la più notevole qualità del soggetto del romanzo. D’altronde, si capisce il perché. Nell’amore omosessuale la differenza di genere non c’è, non c’è la biologica diversità tra uomo e donna ad inquinare la corretta declinazione di un tema che in effetti prescinde il genere e che riguarda qualcosa di profondamente rannicchiato nel fondo di un certo tipo di mente umana, al di là della differenza di sesso. Anzi il contesto omosessuale (in un’epoca in cui più di oggi era un tabù innominabile e rabbiosamente perseguitato) fa emergere meglio la sostanza e le radici appunto universali della incapacità di sentirsi nel diritto di chiedere e ricevere amore; della impossibilità di dare e ricevere comunicazioni con l’altro nella maniera più profonda e completa che sia a disposizione dell’essere umano e cioè con la mente e con il corpo insieme.
Quando si parla di questo tema è sempre centrale il ruolo delle madri. In questo romanzo sono figure dolenti e sconfitte, forse più dei loro figli. Sono vissute da loro come marziane da cui fuggire, a cui bisogna nascondere la verità più gelosamente che a tutti gli altri. Chiedono cose incomprensibili, motivate più dalla loro paura, dal loro bisogno di riconoscimento e dalla ricerca di appagamento delle loro esigenze affettive e sociali, che da quelle di accompagnare e custodire le fragilità dei loro figli.
Ultima cosa. Ho trovato azzeccatissima la scelta di individuare nel contesto militare, nella logica del comandare-obbedire che sfocia nella violenza brutale e letale, lo sbocco finale di tutto il dolore che il rigetto dell’amore comporta. Se c’è un ambiente estremo ed aberrante sotto quell’aspetto è proprio quello militare.
Un romanzo molto forte, anche vivace e brillante nella prima parte, ma è la seconda, quella più dura, la più bella. In tutte e due domina quel personaggio straordinario che è Eustace Chisholm.
A indagarci attorno, Purdy, più leggi, più scavi e più incuriosisce. Un personaggio anomalo, contraddittorio su tanti aspetti, interessante come pochi altri. Per chi volesse saperne di più qui trova qualcosa
https://scarabooks.blogspot.com/2019/...
November 6, 2014
Who? James? James Purdy? Oh no, I just can’t talk to him right now. No. Tell him I’ll call him back. Oh, thanks. You’re so good to me.
Has he gone? Okay. Phew.
Well you know we’ve been seeing each other. Well, for, oh well 107 pages now. Yes, long enough to tell, I think, don’t you? Well, I just think… it’s not going to work out. He’s just… well, I don’t think he’s my type really. What? No, not because of that, what do you take me for, dwarling, some kind of neonazi? It’s just…. He’s really a bit grubby, you know. He doesn’t wash much. And he seems to enjoy rubbing your nose in it. Ech. All his friends are the same, too. I know. I know. And they all live in these sordid apartments and have these depressing relationships and then bang on about how awful their relationships and their apartments and their meals and their pets and their abortions and their sugardaddies and their going nowhere lives are all the god damn time.
I mean, is my life such unmitigated peachy orgasmic ga-ga that I can take all this on board too? You know I had to give up watching Haneke films. What are these boys trying to do to us?
If it wasn’t for that spectacularly horrible abortion scene I would have given Mr Purdy the elbow a week ago. But I thought there’s more where that came from. That scene was really something. And it’s quite interesting in a History of the Novel sort of way watching a 1967 (summer of lurve) novel pepper the prose with the odd f and c words. But thin gruel butters no parsnips, dwarling. No, it doesn’t. It all became just too too dreary. None of these people ever do anything. They moon around and bitch about how much mooning around they do.
What? No! Dreary is not my thing, please, give me a little respect. Savagely despairing, that’s okay. Or sentimentally euphoric. But mooning about, I do enough of that myself, thank you very much.
Well, there was really no need for that comment. Thank you. Hmmph.
Has he gone? Okay. Phew.
Well you know we’ve been seeing each other. Well, for, oh well 107 pages now. Yes, long enough to tell, I think, don’t you? Well, I just think… it’s not going to work out. He’s just… well, I don’t think he’s my type really. What? No, not because of that, what do you take me for, dwarling, some kind of neonazi? It’s just…. He’s really a bit grubby, you know. He doesn’t wash much. And he seems to enjoy rubbing your nose in it. Ech. All his friends are the same, too. I know. I know. And they all live in these sordid apartments and have these depressing relationships and then bang on about how awful their relationships and their apartments and their meals and their pets and their abortions and their sugardaddies and their going nowhere lives are all the god damn time.
I mean, is my life such unmitigated peachy orgasmic ga-ga that I can take all this on board too? You know I had to give up watching Haneke films. What are these boys trying to do to us?
If it wasn’t for that spectacularly horrible abortion scene I would have given Mr Purdy the elbow a week ago. But I thought there’s more where that came from. That scene was really something. And it’s quite interesting in a History of the Novel sort of way watching a 1967 (summer of lurve) novel pepper the prose with the odd f and c words. But thin gruel butters no parsnips, dwarling. No, it doesn’t. It all became just too too dreary. None of these people ever do anything. They moon around and bitch about how much mooning around they do.
What? No! Dreary is not my thing, please, give me a little respect. Savagely despairing, that’s okay. Or sentimentally euphoric. But mooning about, I do enough of that myself, thank you very much.
Well, there was really no need for that comment. Thank you. Hmmph.
July 20, 2018
This book is a wall-to-wall queer masterpiece. It thrives in queer form, it revels in a queer aesthetic, it lives in a queered-up reality and it is a haunting chronicle of what is lost the world when one's own queer gifts and desires are not actualized. It is a liberating read in its casual depiction of lurid gay sex, contains scenes of sado-masochism that would make Takashi Miike blush, and contains probably the most honest chronicle of a pre-Roe v. Wade abortion written by an American man. And that's just scratching the surface.
Amos Ratcliffe is a figure that I know of, or is hinted at, in the personalities of some lovers of mine in ages past, and to be able to know that Amos's individuality is something that other people have had to bear witness to, absorb, and endure is rather comforting for me. If literature is a bridge away from isolation, Eustace Chisholm unifies me with a world by creating a space for this bizarre characters that I do feel I can recognize in my own life. And considering how out there the situations are in this book, it is a remedy for a long-cultivated, overstayed loneliness. Thank heavens someone wrote this book so fearlessly for the rest of us who are clinging onto the bare edges of marginalia, knowing full well that a stiff wind's gonna blow us us right off the pages of history.
I love this book's humor, sadness, violence, magical realism, brutal realism, queerness, and hipness. What an absolute and unparalleled treasure. I rarely feel this exhilarated after a read. So fucking good.
Amos Ratcliffe is a figure that I know of, or is hinted at, in the personalities of some lovers of mine in ages past, and to be able to know that Amos's individuality is something that other people have had to bear witness to, absorb, and endure is rather comforting for me. If literature is a bridge away from isolation, Eustace Chisholm unifies me with a world by creating a space for this bizarre characters that I do feel I can recognize in my own life. And considering how out there the situations are in this book, it is a remedy for a long-cultivated, overstayed loneliness. Thank heavens someone wrote this book so fearlessly for the rest of us who are clinging onto the bare edges of marginalia, knowing full well that a stiff wind's gonna blow us us right off the pages of history.
I love this book's humor, sadness, violence, magical realism, brutal realism, queerness, and hipness. What an absolute and unparalleled treasure. I rarely feel this exhilarated after a read. So fucking good.
March 17, 2021
Although billed by many as a lost gay classic, Eustace Chisholm and the Works is in some ways not the most accessible of books, in that Purdy is not sparing of the sensitivities of his readers.
The book is divided into three parts made up of chapters, and an epilogue. It is set in the 30s, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, as the world prepares to return to war. It presents a disparate group of down-trodden misfits (Eustace's works), adrift in a harsh anarchic world, mirrored in the writing. At a time when society is falling apart, its rules in disarray, and the individual is left to its own economic and moral devices, they don't really know who they are and how to relate to each other and to themselves. Institutions, such as religion and the army, are less than a help to them; they prove to be a curse.
This rise of individualism, 20-odd years after a world war, clearly felt familiar in the late 1960s to Purdy's readers, who made it a bestseller, as it can still in some ways feel familiar to a modern reader. Some critiques were less enamoured, however. Failing to recognise the parallels, one of them called it a “fifth-rate avant-garde soap opera [about] prayer and faggotry.” Purdy has received, and still does, plaudits from renowned writers, though.
What the New York Times dismissed as "a homosexual novel" when it was released, is indeed at times arrowing, and surprisingly explicit for something brought out in 1967 by an established publisher ("I could drink your come in goblets" (p123), "Amos adjusted the folds of his scrotum with deliberate ostentation" (p159)). It is also quite literally visceral: the graphic and gory abortion scene is mirrored later in the book by scenes of barely consensual S&M torture that end with someone "carrying his bowels in his hands like provisions" (p233). Not content of having put his readers through this, Purdy, in the epilogue, goes for the jugular and takes an obvious dig at them, describing Eustace (Ace) as being "as anxious to know the end of the Daniel-Amos story as a depraved inveterate novel-reader" (p238).
Beyond the grotesque gothic of the situations, the writing is sparse and preoccupied mostly with describing the action. Rather alienatingly, the feelings of the characters as the scenes happen remain implicit, apart from a few expository passages dedicated specifically to painting the protagonists' inner lives, to emphasise how contained and discrete they are from what the characters experience.
In fact, events happen to them. Not only are they not agents of their own stories, they refuse to be who they know themselves to be. And the consequences are catastrophic. Homosexuality, for example, which is a reality for all the men of the story, is never the object of judgement. It is ostensibly accepted by everyone in the book. But three of the main characters cannot accept it within themselves.
There is also an artificiality about his characters that tells us that Purdy is trying to imbue them with allegorical value. They have qualities that transcend who they are as people. They represent more than who they are, even as they feel quite believable as people.
Most notably, Amos sits firmly in the literary tradition of the nihilistic angry young male. But the author also imbues him with religious traits, hinting in turn that he could either be the devil (we are told about his "goat feet" in one scene straight from a religious painting where they are washed by another man), cupid whom everyone falls in love with due to his angelic beauty, or "God Almighty" himself, as one of the characters calls him.
Similarly, despite being eponymous, Ace is not central to this ensemble piece. While being one of the outcasts, he is also both the enabler for all these people, the wizard behind the curtain, and a chronicler of their turpitude. He only serves as glue, almost as canvas to a deceptively simple narrative, which is constructed like a cubist painting, composed of an infinite number of layers, and bringing together different perspectives by dryly presenting each character's story in turn. Unlike a cubist painting, however, there is no narrative centre to the book. Just a yawning black hole of unfulfilled potential and passivity. Only in the epilogue, does Purdy finally dish out a sliver of redemptive hope.
The book, which is molded by Purdy's youthful experiences, comes as a vivid and haunting warning to embrace who we are, and to not "rip out the beautiful things in us so we’ll be acceptable to society." It is also a perverted ode to love. This is not the work of an ordinary mind. As Purdy himself later said: 'I'm not a gay writer, I'm a monster. Gay writers are too conservative.' There is nothing conservative about this book. Don't fret if you don't like it though. “I don’t think I’d like it if people liked me,” Purdy once remarked. “I’d think something had gone wrong.”
The book is divided into three parts made up of chapters, and an epilogue. It is set in the 30s, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, as the world prepares to return to war. It presents a disparate group of down-trodden misfits (Eustace's works), adrift in a harsh anarchic world, mirrored in the writing. At a time when society is falling apart, its rules in disarray, and the individual is left to its own economic and moral devices, they don't really know who they are and how to relate to each other and to themselves. Institutions, such as religion and the army, are less than a help to them; they prove to be a curse.
This rise of individualism, 20-odd years after a world war, clearly felt familiar in the late 1960s to Purdy's readers, who made it a bestseller, as it can still in some ways feel familiar to a modern reader. Some critiques were less enamoured, however. Failing to recognise the parallels, one of them called it a “fifth-rate avant-garde soap opera [about] prayer and faggotry.” Purdy has received, and still does, plaudits from renowned writers, though.
What the New York Times dismissed as "a homosexual novel" when it was released, is indeed at times arrowing, and surprisingly explicit for something brought out in 1967 by an established publisher ("I could drink your come in goblets" (p123), "Amos adjusted the folds of his scrotum with deliberate ostentation" (p159)). It is also quite literally visceral: the graphic and gory abortion scene is mirrored later in the book by scenes of barely consensual S&M torture that end with someone "carrying his bowels in his hands like provisions" (p233). Not content of having put his readers through this, Purdy, in the epilogue, goes for the jugular and takes an obvious dig at them, describing Eustace (Ace) as being "as anxious to know the end of the Daniel-Amos story as a depraved inveterate novel-reader" (p238).
Beyond the grotesque gothic of the situations, the writing is sparse and preoccupied mostly with describing the action. Rather alienatingly, the feelings of the characters as the scenes happen remain implicit, apart from a few expository passages dedicated specifically to painting the protagonists' inner lives, to emphasise how contained and discrete they are from what the characters experience.
In fact, events happen to them. Not only are they not agents of their own stories, they refuse to be who they know themselves to be. And the consequences are catastrophic. Homosexuality, for example, which is a reality for all the men of the story, is never the object of judgement. It is ostensibly accepted by everyone in the book. But three of the main characters cannot accept it within themselves.
There is also an artificiality about his characters that tells us that Purdy is trying to imbue them with allegorical value. They have qualities that transcend who they are as people. They represent more than who they are, even as they feel quite believable as people.
Most notably, Amos sits firmly in the literary tradition of the nihilistic angry young male. But the author also imbues him with religious traits, hinting in turn that he could either be the devil (we are told about his "goat feet" in one scene straight from a religious painting where they are washed by another man), cupid whom everyone falls in love with due to his angelic beauty, or "God Almighty" himself, as one of the characters calls him.
Similarly, despite being eponymous, Ace is not central to this ensemble piece. While being one of the outcasts, he is also both the enabler for all these people, the wizard behind the curtain, and a chronicler of their turpitude. He only serves as glue, almost as canvas to a deceptively simple narrative, which is constructed like a cubist painting, composed of an infinite number of layers, and bringing together different perspectives by dryly presenting each character's story in turn. Unlike a cubist painting, however, there is no narrative centre to the book. Just a yawning black hole of unfulfilled potential and passivity. Only in the epilogue, does Purdy finally dish out a sliver of redemptive hope.
The book, which is molded by Purdy's youthful experiences, comes as a vivid and haunting warning to embrace who we are, and to not "rip out the beautiful things in us so we’ll be acceptable to society." It is also a perverted ode to love. This is not the work of an ordinary mind. As Purdy himself later said: 'I'm not a gay writer, I'm a monster. Gay writers are too conservative.' There is nothing conservative about this book. Don't fret if you don't like it though. “I don’t think I’d like it if people liked me,” Purdy once remarked. “I’d think something had gone wrong.”
August 9, 2015
Another literary dervish from the foetid imagination of James Purdy. This is only the second Purdy I have read, and is markedly different from Cabot Wright Begins. Whereas the latter is an excoriating satire, Eustace Chisholm is quite different.
Exactly what it is, I am unsure: a paean to the sanctity of love, a gothic tale of obsession and its horrific consequences, a sly homage to the muse of creativity and the toll it exacts on those enthralled to its servitude.
There is a passage early on that, to the modern reader, seems like a haunting foreshadowing of the ravages of the HIV/Aids epidemic:
“I have to say it all over again,” Carla said to Clayton, but her voice easily carried to the front room. “Never saw such a beautiful boy outside of pictures.”
“It won’t last,” Clayton said in a whisper that did not carry.
“Why not?” Carla wondered.
“Why, he’ll die,” Clayton replied sleepily.
The ethereal beauty of Amos, which seems like an angelic manifestation of gay perfection, has all sorts of repercussions throughout this grim novel, the most devastating being the sado-masochistic relationship between Daniel Haws and Captain Stadger.
What transpires is so brutal, and ultimately so self-destructive, tainted as much with the blood that is spilt as with the love that empowers these acts, that the reader is hard pressed to keep on reading until the end. (The closest comparison with Purdy is the New Queer Cinema of Gregg Araki, I think).
Purdy implicates the reader himself in the gory goings-on when Eustace comments near the end that “he was as anxious to know the end of the Daniel-Amos story as a depraved inveterate novel reader.”
The edition I read has a curious cover featuring a prominent picture of a moth. I was quite puzzled by this, until the shattering ending:
The thick body of a moth on his lips awakened Daniel, and opening an eye – half of his face was pressed tight to the ground – he saw the ‘fair-browed Moon’ about which Amos had once written in a poem addressed to him.
It is perhaps no surprise that both Cabot Wright and Eustace Chisholm were attacked on ‘moral grounds’ upon publication. Infinitely more damaging to Purdy’s critical bastion though was that, in the period during which both of these novels were published, “all his immediate family, his friends and his supporters had died.”
What a devastating fate to befall such a remarkable writer, who wrote so eloquently about the marginalised, and ended up falling through the cracks of history itself.
Exactly what it is, I am unsure: a paean to the sanctity of love, a gothic tale of obsession and its horrific consequences, a sly homage to the muse of creativity and the toll it exacts on those enthralled to its servitude.
There is a passage early on that, to the modern reader, seems like a haunting foreshadowing of the ravages of the HIV/Aids epidemic:
“I have to say it all over again,” Carla said to Clayton, but her voice easily carried to the front room. “Never saw such a beautiful boy outside of pictures.”
“It won’t last,” Clayton said in a whisper that did not carry.
“Why not?” Carla wondered.
“Why, he’ll die,” Clayton replied sleepily.
The ethereal beauty of Amos, which seems like an angelic manifestation of gay perfection, has all sorts of repercussions throughout this grim novel, the most devastating being the sado-masochistic relationship between Daniel Haws and Captain Stadger.
What transpires is so brutal, and ultimately so self-destructive, tainted as much with the blood that is spilt as with the love that empowers these acts, that the reader is hard pressed to keep on reading until the end. (The closest comparison with Purdy is the New Queer Cinema of Gregg Araki, I think).
Purdy implicates the reader himself in the gory goings-on when Eustace comments near the end that “he was as anxious to know the end of the Daniel-Amos story as a depraved inveterate novel reader.”
The edition I read has a curious cover featuring a prominent picture of a moth. I was quite puzzled by this, until the shattering ending:
The thick body of a moth on his lips awakened Daniel, and opening an eye – half of his face was pressed tight to the ground – he saw the ‘fair-browed Moon’ about which Amos had once written in a poem addressed to him.
It is perhaps no surprise that both Cabot Wright and Eustace Chisholm were attacked on ‘moral grounds’ upon publication. Infinitely more damaging to Purdy’s critical bastion though was that, in the period during which both of these novels were published, “all his immediate family, his friends and his supporters had died.”
What a devastating fate to befall such a remarkable writer, who wrote so eloquently about the marginalised, and ended up falling through the cracks of history itself.
August 6, 2025
This is not a gay classic, forgotten or otherwise. It is a great novel and great novels don't need a descriptive adjective to justify themselves. No novel by Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dickens, Austen, Mann, Tolstoy, Joyce or hundred other writers I could name need such support and neither does Purdy.
I must point out that back in the days of 'gay liberation' post Stonewall, which happened in 1967 the year this novel was published, James Purdy was not an obscure or forgotten author he also wasn't regarded by the Sonewall era writers as a 'gay' author. They chose not to accept or acknowledge him just as they didn't want Sanford Friedman or John Horne Burns. As the soi dissant spokesperson for New York gays, Christopher Bram, proclaimed, before Stonewall there were no gay books only books about homosexuality. To retrospectively claim him or his novels as 'gay classics' is hypocritical.
What is useful to look at now is how the novel was described when first published:
"Chicago in the late depression era of the mid-thirties is the setting for James Purdy's new novel. Here in his shabby flat on 55th Street, the narrative poet Eustace 'Ace' Chisholm plays the roll of prophet and priest for a group of the disorientated, the lonely, who throng the city streets.
"He instructs and directs Maureen O'Dell, the painter, to her true vocation as sexual charity for the inexperienced, and comforts the love-sick department store heir Rueben Masterton. However, his most exacting role is as confessor to two young men caught up in a chaste and tragic love affair: Amos Ratcliffe, a fragile, angelic boy too young to qualify for relief when his university fellowship is terminated, and lean Daniel Haws, his part-Cherokee landlord. Unable to acknowledge his affection except unconsciously in nightly sleepwalking trips to Amos's room, Daniel flees into the army. As history modulates from 'economic burnout' to world war, Daniel is overtaken by savage retribution, Amos declines from innocence into moral indifference, and Ace - released at last from responsibility into privacy - faces his own long-overdue moment of self assessment.
"Purdy's prose in 'Eustace Chisholm and the Works' has the terrible beauty of a Goya painting: violent, vivid and complete. His theme is love - an irregular but none the less authentic love - the search for it, the suppression of it, and the astonishing ways in which it sometimes erupts in an antagonistic world. With this novel, James Purdy endorses his reputation as - to quote Dame Edith Sitwell - 'one of the greatest living writers of fiction in our language.'" From the flyleaf of the jacket of the 1968 UK edition from Jonathan Cape which also contains lavish praise from English publications and writers for his previous novels, 'Malcolm', 'The Nephew' and 'Cabot Write Begins' as well as his collection of short stories 'Colour pf Darkness' from The Times, Guardian and Times Literary Review.
This is the second time I have read this exceptional novel and it won't be the last. Purdy is a wonderful, if famously unappreciated author, but the reality behind that lack of appreciation is interesting. If you search out copies of his work you might be surprised how many editions both hardback and paperback there were. Admittedly this was a different time in publishing but publishing is a business and publishers don't publish what doesn't sell. Purdy's lack of recognition was not so much a lack of readers as a lack of appreciation from the literary establishment. If you want a sample of the horseshite the trendy litterateurs poured on him read the 1967 article from Commentary at https://www.commentary.org/articles/c... in which not only is this novel but Purdy's entire oeuvre is dismissed with a surety that only the fatuously trendy could pronounce.
I think this novel is brilliant and though it doesn't quite replace 'The Leopard' by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa as my favorite novel (another novel and writer famously disparaged by the literary culture of his time) it is a close run thing. The wisest part of the publishers blurb above is the part that says:
"His theme is love...the search for it, the suppression of it, and the astonishing ways in which it sometimes erupts in an antagonistic world."
I think that love is the motivating force running through many of Purdy's novels, I've said it about 'Narrow Rooms' previously, but this is not the love of romance novels but erotic love as not an allegory but in the reality that it brings madness which is given by the gods which inevitably brings destruction. Thanatos and Eros were inextricably linked in the classics and Purdy learnt the classic plays and stories before they had been Disneyfied into schmaltz. The stories in 'Eustace Chisholm and the Works' are visceral because they deal with hard truths. The harrowing abortion scene in the novel is comparable to the death of Astyanax in The Women of Troy. The deaths of Amos Ratcliffe and Daniel Haws are horrid and pointless as those Troilus, Patrocklus, Hector or many others - but love is behind all of them. Love for Purdy, like the Greeks and even Shakespeare is frightening and dangerous, if you doubt that read Romeo & Juliet again and wonder why we give it to children to study.
Purdy is a writer that came before 'creative writing' courses and I doubt if he is taught on any, I certainly hope not. He wrote from living, his first novella wasn't published until he was forty five. Most writers who graduate from 'creative writing' schools may have had a novel published by twenty five, but it is usually their last. Forty five is usually twenty years after they gave up writing. You won't find writing like Purdy's today.
If you want to know more about Purdy I refer you to https://www.thereadingexperience.net/... as a good place to begin learning about this wonderful author.
I must point out that back in the days of 'gay liberation' post Stonewall, which happened in 1967 the year this novel was published, James Purdy was not an obscure or forgotten author he also wasn't regarded by the Sonewall era writers as a 'gay' author. They chose not to accept or acknowledge him just as they didn't want Sanford Friedman or John Horne Burns. As the soi dissant spokesperson for New York gays, Christopher Bram, proclaimed, before Stonewall there were no gay books only books about homosexuality. To retrospectively claim him or his novels as 'gay classics' is hypocritical.
What is useful to look at now is how the novel was described when first published:
"Chicago in the late depression era of the mid-thirties is the setting for James Purdy's new novel. Here in his shabby flat on 55th Street, the narrative poet Eustace 'Ace' Chisholm plays the roll of prophet and priest for a group of the disorientated, the lonely, who throng the city streets.
"He instructs and directs Maureen O'Dell, the painter, to her true vocation as sexual charity for the inexperienced, and comforts the love-sick department store heir Rueben Masterton. However, his most exacting role is as confessor to two young men caught up in a chaste and tragic love affair: Amos Ratcliffe, a fragile, angelic boy too young to qualify for relief when his university fellowship is terminated, and lean Daniel Haws, his part-Cherokee landlord. Unable to acknowledge his affection except unconsciously in nightly sleepwalking trips to Amos's room, Daniel flees into the army. As history modulates from 'economic burnout' to world war, Daniel is overtaken by savage retribution, Amos declines from innocence into moral indifference, and Ace - released at last from responsibility into privacy - faces his own long-overdue moment of self assessment.
"Purdy's prose in 'Eustace Chisholm and the Works' has the terrible beauty of a Goya painting: violent, vivid and complete. His theme is love - an irregular but none the less authentic love - the search for it, the suppression of it, and the astonishing ways in which it sometimes erupts in an antagonistic world. With this novel, James Purdy endorses his reputation as - to quote Dame Edith Sitwell - 'one of the greatest living writers of fiction in our language.'" From the flyleaf of the jacket of the 1968 UK edition from Jonathan Cape which also contains lavish praise from English publications and writers for his previous novels, 'Malcolm', 'The Nephew' and 'Cabot Write Begins' as well as his collection of short stories 'Colour pf Darkness' from The Times, Guardian and Times Literary Review.
This is the second time I have read this exceptional novel and it won't be the last. Purdy is a wonderful, if famously unappreciated author, but the reality behind that lack of appreciation is interesting. If you search out copies of his work you might be surprised how many editions both hardback and paperback there were. Admittedly this was a different time in publishing but publishing is a business and publishers don't publish what doesn't sell. Purdy's lack of recognition was not so much a lack of readers as a lack of appreciation from the literary establishment. If you want a sample of the horseshite the trendy litterateurs poured on him read the 1967 article from Commentary at https://www.commentary.org/articles/c... in which not only is this novel but Purdy's entire oeuvre is dismissed with a surety that only the fatuously trendy could pronounce.
I think this novel is brilliant and though it doesn't quite replace 'The Leopard' by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa as my favorite novel (another novel and writer famously disparaged by the literary culture of his time) it is a close run thing. The wisest part of the publishers blurb above is the part that says:
"His theme is love...the search for it, the suppression of it, and the astonishing ways in which it sometimes erupts in an antagonistic world."
I think that love is the motivating force running through many of Purdy's novels, I've said it about 'Narrow Rooms' previously, but this is not the love of romance novels but erotic love as not an allegory but in the reality that it brings madness which is given by the gods which inevitably brings destruction. Thanatos and Eros were inextricably linked in the classics and Purdy learnt the classic plays and stories before they had been Disneyfied into schmaltz. The stories in 'Eustace Chisholm and the Works' are visceral because they deal with hard truths. The harrowing abortion scene in the novel is comparable to the death of Astyanax in The Women of Troy. The deaths of Amos Ratcliffe and Daniel Haws are horrid and pointless as those Troilus, Patrocklus, Hector or many others - but love is behind all of them. Love for Purdy, like the Greeks and even Shakespeare is frightening and dangerous, if you doubt that read Romeo & Juliet again and wonder why we give it to children to study.
Purdy is a writer that came before 'creative writing' courses and I doubt if he is taught on any, I certainly hope not. He wrote from living, his first novella wasn't published until he was forty five. Most writers who graduate from 'creative writing' schools may have had a novel published by twenty five, but it is usually their last. Forty five is usually twenty years after they gave up writing. You won't find writing like Purdy's today.
If you want to know more about Purdy I refer you to https://www.thereadingexperience.net/... as a good place to begin learning about this wonderful author.
September 2, 2019
Rarely do I feel comfortable saying there is a "right way" to feel after finishing a book, but if readers aren't reeling after closing the back cover of James Purdy's 1960s classic of queer literature, "Eustace Chisholm and the Works," I am not sure they read the same book I read!
Telling the story of some low and out characters living at the margins of Chicago society during the peak of the Great Depression, it is honestly remarkable how outright and blatant Purdy is in discussing the sexualities, desires, and actions of his mostly queer cast of characters. Labeled a "pre-stonewall" book by the gay literary elite in the 70s/80s/90s, in fact I find Purdy's tales of diversely queer experiences far more timely and interesting in its engagements than many of the gay texts that followed it and have earned their own canonical statuses.
Refusing to tell a linear tale of a middle-class attractive white gay male character, Purdy instead shows how queerness intersects with and recons with the various other identities we hold and have - foremost among them poverty - and other forms of sexual desires. For this and so much more "Eustace Chisholm" will always rank among my most cherished books.
Telling the story of some low and out characters living at the margins of Chicago society during the peak of the Great Depression, it is honestly remarkable how outright and blatant Purdy is in discussing the sexualities, desires, and actions of his mostly queer cast of characters. Labeled a "pre-stonewall" book by the gay literary elite in the 70s/80s/90s, in fact I find Purdy's tales of diversely queer experiences far more timely and interesting in its engagements than many of the gay texts that followed it and have earned their own canonical statuses.
Refusing to tell a linear tale of a middle-class attractive white gay male character, Purdy instead shows how queerness intersects with and recons with the various other identities we hold and have - foremost among them poverty - and other forms of sexual desires. For this and so much more "Eustace Chisholm" will always rank among my most cherished books.
October 8, 2014
I read this a while ago, along with just about all of Purdy's other novels. I don't know why he's not better known, though I suspect he has a devoted following somewhere. I think he's an American treasure.
The copy of this I have is part of a series called Gay Modern Classics and has a homoerotic painting by Paul Cadmus on the cover. I don't think of it as a "gay novel" but the fact that it had to be so pigeon-holed to be republished says something about Purdy's reputation among the literary establishment.
My memories from it are of a vividly depicted rag-tag bunch of artists and artist-types, led by a poet, who hang out in a rundown apartment in depression-era Chicago. There's also an excruciating depiction of a clandestine abortion administered by a large black man. As I remember the book basically revolves around a tortured love story.
The copy of this I have is part of a series called Gay Modern Classics and has a homoerotic painting by Paul Cadmus on the cover. I don't think of it as a "gay novel" but the fact that it had to be so pigeon-holed to be republished says something about Purdy's reputation among the literary establishment.
My memories from it are of a vividly depicted rag-tag bunch of artists and artist-types, led by a poet, who hang out in a rundown apartment in depression-era Chicago. There's also an excruciating depiction of a clandestine abortion administered by a large black man. As I remember the book basically revolves around a tortured love story.
July 14, 2021
Brutal, sadistic, mythical, graphic, strange, problematic, inappropriate, perverse, moving. When I read Purdy, I'm overwhelmed by the naked PAIN and meaning throbbing through the violence and horror of the relationships. A novel partly about the inability to love, to accept love when it's offered.
Read
August 30, 2023Ho declamato l'aborto nei dettagli di Maureen come scena più disgustosa mai letta perché nessuna recensione mi aveva preparata alla raccolta di nichilismo e sadomasochismo di cui è permeato questo libro. Non ce n'è per nessuno, stomaci deboli in particolare che lo affronteranno in futuro. Poche volte sono stata così senza parole e senza stelle da distribuire, leggetelo proprio se siete in vacanza e avete già gettato via il flacone dello shampoo, vuoto e con gli ingredienti imparati a memoria. Anzi neppure in quel caso, uscite e andate a farvi un giro. Anche in piena notte, prendete una bella boccata d'aria fresca e tenetevene lontani. Cercate le storie omosessuali, cercate l'amore... qui non c'è né l'uno né l'altro se non, più che rose e cenere, sangue e nulla.
La traduzione italiana comunque è terrificante.
La traduzione italiana comunque è terrificante.
February 17, 2021
Eustace Chisholm and the Works, a 1967 novel that became a gay classic, is an especially outspoken book among the author's controversial body of work. Purdy recalls that Eustace Chisholm and the Works, named one of the Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels of the 20th Century, outraged the New York literary establishment. Set in a rooming-house in depression-era Chicago the novel brings a marvellous game of emotional chairs. Eustace's wife moves back in while he takes up with a man. It was my introduction to the work of James Purdy and I found it more liberating, in the imaginative sense, than outrageous. Perhaps because I had read so much science fiction in my teens I was ready for a book whose story is more magical than mundane. It introduced me to a contemporary world beyond my own and a style of writing that would lead me to read many more of Purdy's novels over the ensuing years. They are the sort of books you remember fondly for their intensity and imagination and they are the ones that you consider rereading to recapture some of the verve that made you feel alive as you read them. More than breaking out of the pre-Stonewall closet, however, this novel liberated its author and readers can be grateful for that.
March 10, 2010
Compelling and horrifying. At turns grim and humorous, this is a rather stunning exploration of desperation and cruelty. Set in Hyde Park during the Depression, the book follows a ragtag group of characters--Eustace, a bisexual sponger and failed poet; Amos, an angelic-looking university student turned rentboy; Daniel, a haunted and listless ex-coal miner who cannot face up to his own desires. Unable to possess what they desire, these three men torment each other psychologically and their lives become increasingly broken. Purdy's writing is vicious and quick-paced; the novel is a page-turner, encouraging in the reader an insatiable voyeurism--I found myself always wanting to know what these characters would allow to happen to them next, and just how far things would really go. Purdy spares few punches, giving us a picture of a world in which sadistic desires and deep, soulful love are inextricable one from another.
July 2, 2013
Wow. I somehow found this book via a booklist either on here or on Amazon, and ordered it because it sounded interesting. But interesting is an unsderstatement. The characters in this story are depraved and beautiful. Purdy's characterization is amazing, they feel both atypical and authentic, archetypical and alive. I feel like taking a trip to 1930s Chicago to find the originals for this crazy gang of outcasts. Not to mention Purdy's writing style: amazing. This should be considered a "classic," if for no other reason than to reclaim tales about "others."
September 12, 2019
This is one of my more favorite of Purdy's works that I've read so far. Some of it seemed a little one track and people's fascination with the grit parts for the sake of grit alone certainly isn't something I understand, but the writing is extremely tight and solid with great characters, and the ending is particularly good. The easiest way to have improved my reading experience would been to have omitted Franzen's forward. Honestly, why even bother with that?
Read
August 3, 2015This seems to be the month of forgotten 20th century American novelists for me – after Maureen Howard’s brilliant
Natural History: A Novel
, now James Purdy with his novel Eustace Chisholm & the Works. Purdy, although dead – he has born in 1914 and died in 2009 -, seems not quite as thoroughly buried as Maureen Howard – it looks like he always had a bit of a cult following and there even seems to be a bit of a revival going on, with his out-of-print works being reissued. Which would certainly be very welcome, because, judging by Eustace Chisholm, he was a very remarkable writer indeed.
Weirdly, and to my considerable surprise, Eustace Chisholm & the Works reminded me a lot of William Gaddis’ first novel The Recognitions – while it is shorter and less complex and lacks the vast amounts of erudition Gaddis splattered all across his work, both novels share something that I would like to describe (for lack of a better word) as their motion. Both Eustace Chisholm and The Recognitions are ensemble novels, they do not have a single protagonist whose unfolding story the reader would follow, not even a small group like a couple or a family, but a large cast of characters none of which would stand out as central; and their stories are not presented as continuous threads weaving a tapestry, but rather as isolated, small episodes which the reader has to actively perceive as a mosaic. Unlike the novels of, say, Dos Passos, however, who so far does something quite similar, The Recognitions and Eustace Chisholm do not replace the central character with a central perspective and ordering overview but, so to speak, stay at eye level with their characters and their fragmented worldview – while there is no single central perspective, each character forms the centre of his section of the narrative, resulting in a constant shift of focus throughout the novels, a stop-and-go, jerking, stuttering motion that can induce dizziness and indeed seems to have led to seasickness in many readers both of Purdy and Gaddis.
Eustace Chisholm & the Works, though, it has to be said, is considerable more accessible than The Recognitions. Where Gaddis often seems to be hellbent on frustrating the reader, Eustace Chisholm, while still a demanding read, appears to do its best to ease readers into its vertiginous structure – indeed, almost to lure them in, only to then shock and repel them with scenes of a harrowing violence that in their sheer, unmitigated brutality have an almost physical impact on the reader. The novel does have its humorous moments, does indeed have so many of them that it reads in part like a comedy, but in the end it is a tragedy that functions as its own satyr play.
And as it should in satyr play, sexuality plays a large part in Eustace Chisholm – more specifically male homosexuality to which the book has a remarkably relaxed and matter-of-course attitude that makes it unusual even today and that might very well have been just as shocking to readers at the time of it its first publishing as the scenes of violence. (And one might also note, to bring this comparison up for the last time, that homosexuality seems to play a structurally similar role in Eustace Chisholm as Catholicism does in The Recognitions.) But if the novel is accepting of homosexuality, its characters are not necessarily so, and in fact it is precisely this which finally gives rice to tragedy out of the farce – everyone in the novel is in some way or other refusing their innermost desires, not even acknowledging even – or possibly particularly – when they get a chance to fulfill them. Turning away their chance at fulfilment and happiness, they find that the denied desires will not be gainsaid but return to haunt them in invariably self-destructive ways.
Eustace Chisholm & the Works has apparently become something of a “gay modern classic” (at least that is what the cover of my edition claims) but it is worth reading not just because of its subject matter but because it attempts (and largely succeeds) to find a literary form for an altered way of life, the lack of a narrative centre or unified thread, the permanently shifting perspective capturing both the dissolution of social ties and the increase in individual freedom in 60s’ subcultures. In other words, this is excellent stuff and James Purdy is definitely a writer I want to read more of.
Weirdly, and to my considerable surprise, Eustace Chisholm & the Works reminded me a lot of William Gaddis’ first novel The Recognitions – while it is shorter and less complex and lacks the vast amounts of erudition Gaddis splattered all across his work, both novels share something that I would like to describe (for lack of a better word) as their motion. Both Eustace Chisholm and The Recognitions are ensemble novels, they do not have a single protagonist whose unfolding story the reader would follow, not even a small group like a couple or a family, but a large cast of characters none of which would stand out as central; and their stories are not presented as continuous threads weaving a tapestry, but rather as isolated, small episodes which the reader has to actively perceive as a mosaic. Unlike the novels of, say, Dos Passos, however, who so far does something quite similar, The Recognitions and Eustace Chisholm do not replace the central character with a central perspective and ordering overview but, so to speak, stay at eye level with their characters and their fragmented worldview – while there is no single central perspective, each character forms the centre of his section of the narrative, resulting in a constant shift of focus throughout the novels, a stop-and-go, jerking, stuttering motion that can induce dizziness and indeed seems to have led to seasickness in many readers both of Purdy and Gaddis.
Eustace Chisholm & the Works, though, it has to be said, is considerable more accessible than The Recognitions. Where Gaddis often seems to be hellbent on frustrating the reader, Eustace Chisholm, while still a demanding read, appears to do its best to ease readers into its vertiginous structure – indeed, almost to lure them in, only to then shock and repel them with scenes of a harrowing violence that in their sheer, unmitigated brutality have an almost physical impact on the reader. The novel does have its humorous moments, does indeed have so many of them that it reads in part like a comedy, but in the end it is a tragedy that functions as its own satyr play.
And as it should in satyr play, sexuality plays a large part in Eustace Chisholm – more specifically male homosexuality to which the book has a remarkably relaxed and matter-of-course attitude that makes it unusual even today and that might very well have been just as shocking to readers at the time of it its first publishing as the scenes of violence. (And one might also note, to bring this comparison up for the last time, that homosexuality seems to play a structurally similar role in Eustace Chisholm as Catholicism does in The Recognitions.) But if the novel is accepting of homosexuality, its characters are not necessarily so, and in fact it is precisely this which finally gives rice to tragedy out of the farce – everyone in the novel is in some way or other refusing their innermost desires, not even acknowledging even – or possibly particularly – when they get a chance to fulfill them. Turning away their chance at fulfilment and happiness, they find that the denied desires will not be gainsaid but return to haunt them in invariably self-destructive ways.
Eustace Chisholm & the Works has apparently become something of a “gay modern classic” (at least that is what the cover of my edition claims) but it is worth reading not just because of its subject matter but because it attempts (and largely succeeds) to find a literary form for an altered way of life, the lack of a narrative centre or unified thread, the permanently shifting perspective capturing both the dissolution of social ties and the increase in individual freedom in 60s’ subcultures. In other words, this is excellent stuff and James Purdy is definitely a writer I want to read more of.
February 26, 2021
It is not often that I find myself involuntarily smiling while reading a book, but that happened just about every time I sat down to read Eustace Chisholm and the Works, my favorite of the books I’ve read so far this year and one of the best novels I’ve ever read, period. This isn’t to say that the novel is a light or amusing one, although it does sometimes have the courage to be funny. On the contrary, Eustace is almost relentlessly bleak. Taking place against the vague backdrop of the Great Depression, the novel is populated by a dissolute cast of characters who hurt each other, abuse themselves, languish in their squalor, make foolish and self-destructive decisions, and let futile, unimportant, worthless social ideals get in the way of their happiness, culminating in an especially dread-inducing final third that concludes with a ghastly act of bodily violence. Like Narrow Rooms, Purdy’s later (phenomenal) horror tale of tormented male-male desire, the novel draws on the mode of Greek tragedy to suggest the hopeless inevitability of its dark outcomes, an inevitability feebly submitted to by its doomed central figure, who hardly even has the dignity to resist. Despair is the constant, and by the end it has been fine-tuned to a feverish, nightmarish intensity uncommon in modern literature.
It is the wonderful skill with which Purdy manages this gloomy tale, the enormous degree of feeling that these scenes of cruelty impart, that elicited my smiles. Purdy’s scenarios never feel contrived, insincere, or cynical. Rather, despite (or, more likely, because of) their sense of melodrama and heightened intensity, they manage to convey all the pain and beauty of real life. His tenderness for the characters, despite the emotional (and ultimately physical) wringer he puts them through, both heightens the horror and tragedy by contrast and provides a dim, feeble window of escape from it. The reader suffers, yes; we feel the pangs of unconsummated desire, we exasperate over the pointless self-annihilation of the protagonists, we feel an immense despair over the slim hopes for love in such a barbaric and sadistic world; but most of all, above anything else, the feeling Eustace Chisholm and the Works left me with was joy. Joy and gratitude and admiration, at having found such a beautiful work by such an overlooked, underappreciated, and utterly singular genius. Thank the heavens for James Purdy.
It is the wonderful skill with which Purdy manages this gloomy tale, the enormous degree of feeling that these scenes of cruelty impart, that elicited my smiles. Purdy’s scenarios never feel contrived, insincere, or cynical. Rather, despite (or, more likely, because of) their sense of melodrama and heightened intensity, they manage to convey all the pain and beauty of real life. His tenderness for the characters, despite the emotional (and ultimately physical) wringer he puts them through, both heightens the horror and tragedy by contrast and provides a dim, feeble window of escape from it. The reader suffers, yes; we feel the pangs of unconsummated desire, we exasperate over the pointless self-annihilation of the protagonists, we feel an immense despair over the slim hopes for love in such a barbaric and sadistic world; but most of all, above anything else, the feeling Eustace Chisholm and the Works left me with was joy. Joy and gratitude and admiration, at having found such a beautiful work by such an overlooked, underappreciated, and utterly singular genius. Thank the heavens for James Purdy.
March 31, 2018
Mammaria che libro. Era davvero tanto che non leggevo qualcosa che mi coinvolgesse e sconvolgesse così tanto, mi ha completamente conquistata e non mi ha lasciato prendere fiato fino all'ultima pagina. Incredibile.
Dopo un inizio un po' in sordina e poco convincente è iniziata una spirale di passione, dolore, amore, ossessione e follia dalla quale non si riesce ad uscire. Mi pare di aver conosciuto Amos, Ace, Daniel, Carla ..mi pare di averli incontrati e di aver parlato con loro.
Personaggi eccezionali, ognuno perfetto nella propria folle imperfezione, ognuno a sé stante ma completo solo insieme agli altri.
E' un libro crudo e doloroso, di una forza vista raramente, leggendolo pare di scivolare in un baratro, prima lentamente, poi sempre più velocemente, fino all'ultima parte quando ci si accorge che è impossibile smettere di leggere.
Una scoperta davvero inaspettata.
Dopo un inizio un po' in sordina e poco convincente è iniziata una spirale di passione, dolore, amore, ossessione e follia dalla quale non si riesce ad uscire. Mi pare di aver conosciuto Amos, Ace, Daniel, Carla ..mi pare di averli incontrati e di aver parlato con loro.
Personaggi eccezionali, ognuno perfetto nella propria folle imperfezione, ognuno a sé stante ma completo solo insieme agli altri.
E' un libro crudo e doloroso, di una forza vista raramente, leggendolo pare di scivolare in un baratro, prima lentamente, poi sempre più velocemente, fino all'ultima parte quando ci si accorge che è impossibile smettere di leggere.
Una scoperta davvero inaspettata.
November 16, 2012
I first learned of this novel, and of James Purdy, from an essay included in Jonathan Franzen's latest collection "Farther Away." And I say, without exaggeration, that this is the finest piece of fiction I have encountered in a very very long time. The development of and relationships between the various characters are so real and poignant that you are genuinely sorry to see the book end. Just a tremendous achievement. I can't recommend it highly enough.
February 12, 2020
Un poeta, un soldato, un milionario e un giovinetto, novello Antinoo, bello come un dio: sono i quattro moschettieri decadenti, eroi senza qualità e senz'altra spada che quella tra le gambe.
(Con cui combattono - a braccetto con von Masoch - l'orrore, la morte, l'amore impossibile).
(Con cui combattono - a braccetto con von Masoch - l'orrore, la morte, l'amore impossibile).
December 17, 2019
Surprising and brutal.
August 12, 2025
Brutal, funny, pitch black, essential Purdy. The many doomed paths of faggotry laid out. Bail now or meet your peril!! Homopessimism?
May 21, 2025
everything was turned up to 11/10 in a way that wasn't particularly interesting or compelling
September 9, 2012
What happens in this novel is repulsive, pointless, uneven, and utterly captivating. Ditto for the characters. It's clear I didn't really understand the meaning of the word "sadistic" until I read this book. Unlike anything I've ever read before, and I'm still undecided on whether that is a good thing or not.
The book's mere existence feels confounding. It doesn't fit into the narrative we have not only of gay literature but of American literature at large. I mean, if you've wondered what the opposite of To Kill A Mockingbird might read like, this bedeviled ode to occult religion, injustice, unfairness, and pain is pretty much it -- yet barely 6 years separate Harper Lee's book from this one. (Of course, this surreal fable was also published in the same year as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Myra Breckenridge, and In Watermelon Sugar, so perhaps its iconoclasm is not so renegade and out of touch with its time as I thought.)
Whatever the case, I struggled with it mightily at first. And this was BEFORE the book got utterly surreal and physically difficult to read! I like to think I'm progressive enough to understand that the bourgeois, heteronormative, sex-romp-disguised-as-coming-of-age that is the main register of so much well-known and -regarded gay fiction is problematic, and worthy of serious critique. I love Dennis Cooper and his literary shivs to the stomach of the genteel boho-homo life that many gay authors treat as not only an aspirational existince but as a standard baseline comprehension-level background for many gay readers. Yet the Gothic-Romance drama that unfolds in the first part of the book, peopled by lower middle class, Depression-era white trash was really difficult to wrap my brain around. The attitudes and mores of these people were completely foreign to me, and (I'm ashamed to admit) not all that compelling to me either. I nearly abandoned them mid-book.
Then shit got real. A spoiler alert seems unnecessary in a book where pretty much everything that happens seems implausible and out of left field, but needless to say things take a turn for the mean reds about halfway or two-thirds through. Much of the focus of the action moves to a deep, dark place (a military camp in Mississippi) and things -- that is, both the actions in the novel and the sensation of reading the book -- become extremely uncomfortable and tense. The sadism you find in, say, a Dennis Cooper novel (or in the work of his straight-acting fellow gay Chuck Palahniuk) just feels so slick at times. It's disgusting, yes, but it's done up in such high-glam glossy duds (and written in such a sophisticated way) that it feels fairly remote and thus slightly easier to choke down. That's not the case here. The final chapters of the book are brutal and harrowing and somewhat inexplicable in their provenance. Yes, the literally torturous army section felt as remote and incomprehensible from my overeducated urban viewpoint as the first half in the slums of Chicago, but the difference this time was that I was riveted. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but I feel something deep and disturbing, and am fully rattled just typing these words out.
The book's mere existence feels confounding. It doesn't fit into the narrative we have not only of gay literature but of American literature at large. I mean, if you've wondered what the opposite of To Kill A Mockingbird might read like, this bedeviled ode to occult religion, injustice, unfairness, and pain is pretty much it -- yet barely 6 years separate Harper Lee's book from this one. (Of course, this surreal fable was also published in the same year as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Myra Breckenridge, and In Watermelon Sugar, so perhaps its iconoclasm is not so renegade and out of touch with its time as I thought.)
Whatever the case, I struggled with it mightily at first. And this was BEFORE the book got utterly surreal and physically difficult to read! I like to think I'm progressive enough to understand that the bourgeois, heteronormative, sex-romp-disguised-as-coming-of-age that is the main register of so much well-known and -regarded gay fiction is problematic, and worthy of serious critique. I love Dennis Cooper and his literary shivs to the stomach of the genteel boho-homo life that many gay authors treat as not only an aspirational existince but as a standard baseline comprehension-level background for many gay readers. Yet the Gothic-Romance drama that unfolds in the first part of the book, peopled by lower middle class, Depression-era white trash was really difficult to wrap my brain around. The attitudes and mores of these people were completely foreign to me, and (I'm ashamed to admit) not all that compelling to me either. I nearly abandoned them mid-book.
Then shit got real. A spoiler alert seems unnecessary in a book where pretty much everything that happens seems implausible and out of left field, but needless to say things take a turn for the mean reds about halfway or two-thirds through. Much of the focus of the action moves to a deep, dark place (a military camp in Mississippi) and things -- that is, both the actions in the novel and the sensation of reading the book -- become extremely uncomfortable and tense. The sadism you find in, say, a Dennis Cooper novel (or in the work of his straight-acting fellow gay Chuck Palahniuk) just feels so slick at times. It's disgusting, yes, but it's done up in such high-glam glossy duds (and written in such a sophisticated way) that it feels fairly remote and thus slightly easier to choke down. That's not the case here. The final chapters of the book are brutal and harrowing and somewhat inexplicable in their provenance. Yes, the literally torturous army section felt as remote and incomprehensible from my overeducated urban viewpoint as the first half in the slums of Chicago, but the difference this time was that I was riveted. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but I feel something deep and disturbing, and am fully rattled just typing these words out.
June 12, 2019
Insane and devastating. Just the way I like it. His name should be shouted from the rooftops instead of just being an intriguing little footnote. A tough read, but there is plenty of awful dark humour to get you through it.
July 20, 2019
Ho comprato questo libro per puro caso, non conoscendo il titolo o l'autore. Credevo fosse semplicemente un romanzo breve del mio genere preferito: una storia gay con personaggi legati al mondo dell'arte. Tutto qui.
Non immaginavo che avrei trovato uno dei testi più delicati e incisivi dal punto di vista della prosa che io abbia mai toccato. La storia, sebbene siano meno di 200 pagine, è complessa e legata a diversi personaggi, che si incontrano intorno alla figura di Eustache. Amos e Daniel sono sicuramente i due che resteranno con me forse per sempre, i due personaggi da cui, anche dopo che si è chiuso il romanzo, non ci si riesce a staccare.
Consiglio questo libro a tutti, senza badare troppo alla trama o a quello che ci si aspetta, perché sebbene sia una lettura breve colpisce ed è difficile da dimenticare.
Un altro dettaglio secondo me molto importante è che nonostante alcune tematiche possano essere forti e non vengano assolutamente nascoste, mai ho percepito il libro come triggering.
Non immaginavo che avrei trovato uno dei testi più delicati e incisivi dal punto di vista della prosa che io abbia mai toccato. La storia, sebbene siano meno di 200 pagine, è complessa e legata a diversi personaggi, che si incontrano intorno alla figura di Eustache. Amos e Daniel sono sicuramente i due che resteranno con me forse per sempre, i due personaggi da cui, anche dopo che si è chiuso il romanzo, non ci si riesce a staccare.
Consiglio questo libro a tutti, senza badare troppo alla trama o a quello che ci si aspetta, perché sebbene sia una lettura breve colpisce ed è difficile da dimenticare.
Un altro dettaglio secondo me molto importante è che nonostante alcune tematiche possano essere forti e non vengano assolutamente nascoste, mai ho percepito il libro come triggering.
March 3, 2009
This Purdy novel is set in Depression era Chicago, with a narrator (the title character) in the mid stages of syphilis, although he seems happy enough to ignore that it's having any effect on him. Eustace also serves as a protagonist and sometimes he's an antagonist in the story. The rest of the characters can be summed up as their own worst enemies. I don't usually do warnings with books, but in this case, I will. This book had one of the most horrific, even if it was non-explicit, torture plot lines I've ever read. It seemed all too real for fiction. It's very necessary to the story, but it was hard to read.
August 3, 2011
Intense, powerful, disturbing. I was afraid to keep reading and afraid to stop. How is it that I never heard of this book before in my life? But if I'd known anything about it beforehand, I might never have read it.
November 21, 2010
A great book. A runaway train of a book. An American masterpiece.
Read
March 13, 2008Jonathan Franzen selected this for the 2005 Clifton Fadiman Medal.
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