Eustace Chisholm and the Works

  “An overwhelming novel, expertly shaped to turn its full force and fury upon the reader’s susceptibilities.”

  —Atlanta Journal

  “Such is the honesty and sensual immediacy of Purdy’s work, which is his power to make nerve and bone speak, that our imagination emerges somehow dignified, for here is the sharpness, integrity, life-giving energy of Purdy’s art and of the American language at its best.”

  —George Steiner,

  London Sunday Times

  “His appalling fable of the impossibility of love . . . is conceived and executed with the most elaborate artistry. The discrepancy between extravagant action or feeling and elegantly fashioned form gives its characteristic quality to Purdy’s work. Only the poise and coolness of the style make this nightmare vision tolerable.”

  —Rachel Trickett,

  Yale Review

  OTHER NOVELS BY JAMES PURDY

  Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue

  Reaching Rose

  Garments the Living Wear

  In the Hollow of His Hand

  On Glory’s Course

  Mourners Below

  Dream Palaces: Three Novels (omnibus)

  Narrow Rooms

  In a Shallow Grave

  The House of the Solitary Maggot

  I Am Elijah Thrush

  Jeremy’s Version

  Malcolm

  Cabot Wright Begins

  The Nephew

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  James Purdy (1914–2009) was born in rural Ohio, moving to Chicago at an early age and eventually to Brooklyn. First recognized by critics in Britain, his published works—including nineteen novels in addition to story collections and plays—have been widely translated. He was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, Ford and Rockefeller Foundation grants, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Fiction Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Clifton Fadiman Medal, and was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award.

  Copyright © 1967 by James Purdy. Copyright renewed 1995 by James Purdy.

  First published as a Liveright paperback 2015

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

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  Production manager: Louise Parasmo

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Purdy, James, 1914–2009.

  Eustace Chisholm and the works / James Purdy.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 978-0-87140-952-2 (pbk.)

  1. Gay men—Fiction. 2. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3531.U426E94 2015

  813'.54—dc23

  2014041960

  ISBN 978-0-87140-954-6 (e-book)

  Liveright Publishing Corporation, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

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