EUSTACE CHISHOLM AND THE WORKS

by James Purdy ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 22, 1967

After the frothy mischief of Cabot Wright Begins, an hilariously abusive portrait of life in the Sixties, James Purdy now returns to an earlier mode, that insinuating mixture of the neo-Gothic and the flat conversational style used in Malcolm, The Nephew, and the stories, one of which stems partly from McCullers, Jane Bowles, and Capote, though invested primarily with his own sly, parabolic tint. The tale, set in Chicago during the depression, is a study of various muted relationships, principally centered round the thwarted homosexual romance of Amos, a figure of golden beauty and Daniel, a savagely repressed young man who undergoes a sado-masochistic death in the Army, a situation clearly modeled after Lawrence's The Prussian Officer. It is never particularly apparent how one is to react to the familiar theme of the destruction of innocence here, since the mood elusively oscillates between the sentimental and the tragic, the comic and the grim, and the controlling commentator, Eustace, a failed bohemian, is a bit too gaga to give the proceedings a telling perspective. The best moments are largely incidental, such as the brilliantly macabre scene where Daniel's girl, watched over by Amos, has an abortion. The lasting impression is that of a dreamy, stifled cry.

Pub Date: May 22, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Girous

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1967

Categories: FICTION