Narrow Rooms

by James Purdy

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Gore Vidal's recent feature profile of James Purdy in the Sunday New York Times Book Review signaled the long overdue arrival of a major literary cult hero into the American canon. Purdy's exquisitely surreal fiction has been populated for more than 40 years by social outcasts living in crisis and longing for love. However, Purdy was also among the first novelists to incorporate transgressive renderings of gay life into his work, including unapologetic, sexually explicit material. Narrow show more Rooms-his 1978 classic that ranks among his most masterful novels-is a passionate and sometimes bloody love story about adolescent obsession and revenge. show less

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94+ Works 2,658 Members
James Purdy was born in Ohio in 1923. After serving in the Army, he attended the University of Puebla in Mexico before receiving an M.A. in Romance languages at the University of Chicago and spending some time at the University of Madrid. He taught at Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin from 1949 to 1953. During his lifetime he wrote about 20 show more novels as well as numerous short stories and plays. Some of his best-known works include the following: Color of Darkness (1957), Malcolm (1959), The Nephew (1960), Cabot Wright Begins (1964), I Am Elijah Thrush (1972), In a Shallow Grave (1976), and Narrow Rooms (1977). He also wrote the Sleepers in Moon-Crowned Valleys trilogy, which comprised of Jeremy's Version (1970), The House of the Solitary Maggot (1974), and Mourners Below (1981). He died on March 13, 2009 at the age of 94. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

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Genres
Fiction and Literature, LGBTQ+, General Fiction
DDC/MDS
813Literature & rhetoricAmerican literature in EnglishAmerican fiction in English
LCC
PS3531 .U426 .N3Language and LiteratureAmerican literatureAmerican literatureIndividual authors1900-1960
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Dutch, English, French, Spanish
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13
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4