Bruce Duffy, whose acclaimed novels centered on intellectual figures, died Feb. 10 of complications from brain cancer, the New York Times reports. He was 70.
Duffy is best known for his 1987 novel, The World as I Found It, about the life of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The book received rave reviews upon publication, including one from Kirkus, which said that Duffy “has concocted letters, rearranged biography, toyed with language and philosophy, and come up with an idiosyncratic tale that, line after line, crackles with sharp wit.”
Duffy worked on his fiction between (and sometimes during) stints as a speechwriter, consultant, and security guard at a children’s hospital. World brought him substantial acclaim; he was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Whiting Award recipient, and Joyce Carol Oates called it one of the five best nonfiction novels ever. In 2010, New York Review Books brought Duffy back into the spotlight by reissuing World.
But follow-ups came slowly. His second novel, a coming-of-age tale titled Last Comes the Egg, was published in 1997. In 2011 he released his third and final novel, Disaster Was My God, inspired by the life of French poet Arthur Rimbaud. In its review, Kirkus said that the novel “opens up the poet’s psychological depths, emotional torments, and sexual proclivities.”
According to the Times, Duffy leaves behind one unfinished novel and one finished one titled American Humdinger, a historical novel about the creation of the atomic bomb.
Mark Athitakis is a journalist in Phoenix who writes about books for Kirkus, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.
