Book Description
A literary cult hero of major proportions, James Purdy's exquisitely surreal fiction-Tennessee Williams meets William S. Burroughs-has been populated for more than forty years by social outcasts living in crisis and longing for love. His acclaimed first novel, Malcolm (1959), won praise from writers as diverse as Dame Edith Sitwell, Dorothy Parker, and Gore Vidal, while his later works, from the award-winning In a Shallow Grave (1976) to Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue (1998), influenced new generations of authors. Eustace Chisholm and the Works, a 1967 novel that became a gay classic, is an especially outspoken book among the author's controversial body of work. Purdy recalls that Eustace Chisholm and the Works-named one of the Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels of the 20th Century-outraged the New York literary establishment. More than breaking out of the pre-Stonewall closet, however, the book liberated its author and readers can be grateful for that.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

First published in 1967 when it was deemed too revolutionary for its day, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, in the words of its author, "outraged the anesthetic, hypocritical, preppy, and stagnant New York literary establishment." Set in Chicago of the late 1930s, the novel centers on young Amos Ratcliffe and hard-bitten Daniel Haws. The pair comprises just two of "The Works": a group of displaced people gathered around Eustace Chisholm and his run-down apartment, all searching for love amid the ruins of the Great Depression.

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