posted on 17 Apr 2016

Eustace Chisholm & The Works by James Purdy

James Purdy (1914 – 2009) is very much a writers writer – or, maybe for some, a fringe cult author. In his career he consistently flirted with censorship and public disapproval for the characters he created and his, often very frank, fascination with sexuality and violence. Gore Vidal considered him a genius and, more recently, Jonathan Franzen has championed his work saying that he is one of America’s most under-rated authors. He published consistently from 1956 onwards and was impressively prolific – not just in terms of novel writing but as an essayist and short stories.

Eustace Chisholm & The Works comes from his most controversial period in the middle of the 1960s and it is easy to see from this book why he was thought so daring. Set in the depression years of the 1930s in Chicago, Eustace Chisholm (Ace) is a would-be poet living a hand-to-mouth existence and acting as guiding spirit and mentor to a gaggle of damaged individuals and social misfits who circle around his flame.

Chisholm scribbles his poetic masterpiece on old newspaper in between taking peculiar Greek lessons from the magnetic and cherubic-faced Amos – with whom everyone, man and woman alike, fall hopelessly in love. Amos has a room in the house of  Daniel Haws who is a sleepwalking, repressed homosexual – both are secretly and deeply in love with each other but Haws in particular resists the truth.

Chisholm is married to Carla who has come back to him despite an attempt to run off with another lover and now has to pay the penance of complete dependency – although at the very end of the novel Carla is in fact transformed into Ace’s saving spirit.

Then there is Maureen O’Dell, a failing artist who, encouraged by Chisholm, is dedicating herself to sexual freedom and exploration but is, in reality, a lost soul. She too is in love with Amos but pregnant by his landlord Daws. Meanwhile Amos is also courted by another of Chisholm’s odd entourage, the wealthy and dissolute Reuben Masterson who wants to own Amos and take him away from the influence of Haws.

Without revealing how the plot plays out between this odd group of people, all of whom are lost individually and cannot connect severally, the course of the action is often brutal and characterised by unflinching portraits of sex and violence. The description of Maureen’s illegal abortion is genuinely distressing and stomach churning and the homo-erotic torture suffered by Daws when he joins the army would be daring in any age let alone in the more prudish environment of  1960s USA.

Purdy is interested in exploring what we mean by the concept of love and his characters ultimately represent the full gamut of that emotion – from the absurdly innocent to the Platonic to the perverse and perverted and ultimately to the pure and sacrificial. He takes us on a journey that is ultimately rather claustrophobic and doomed and, although Chisholm wants to think of himself as the eminence grise he is, in reality, in control of nothing – not even his own ‘talent’ as a poet.

Truthfully, I found the book – only 250 pages – pretty tough going. There were no characters here to deserve sympathy or with whom to identify and the act of reading felt more like an act of voyeurism. Ultimately, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that Purdy was setting his characters up in terrible circumstances just so that he could have the thrill of writing about it.

The book is available now in paperback and interestingly enough it’s being marketed as ‘a modern gay classic’. You can pick copies up for a few pounds but if you want a hardback first edition you’ll pay more.

Terry Potter

April 2016