James Purdy's 11th novel takes place in a timeless drift that vaguely resembles World War II. Two brothers, Justin and Douglas Bledsoe, have been blown to bits. They died "in the same division, on the same day," and their "grim unmended bathrobes" are sent home in a crate to the small Midwestern town where they were born. "There was nothing to bury but maybe a dog tag and some scraps of clothes."
The story is deceptively simple. It's a kind of battlefield where the living play dead, and the dead begin to warp those "mourners below." Most of the novel exists in that lost hour "between very late and very early." This has always been the strength of Mr. Purdy's writing. He cuts below the skin and doesn't become involved with the sociology of any particular time or place. He uses locale to isolate hysteria and deal with that terrible anger of being unloved. The rhythms of his prose have nothing to do with mimicry, or the rendering of American speech. He has never sought to be a caricaturist, to parody the best or the worst of our lives. That slight awkwardness of Mr. Purdy's corrosive style, the deadpan electricity his characters speak with is the crazy jumping sound of the heart's own music.
James Purdy is one of the very best writers we have. He exists in some strange limbo between adoration and neglect. His books are "noticed," but they are rarely celebrated the way they should be. Perhaps this is because Mr. Purdy doesn't play the peacock in his books or strut around with his talents. You have to peek under the feathers to catch the wildness of his prose.
[From the NYT book review, July 26, 1981.]
