" I would talk to myself, telling myself the same story I have already told so many times, but it helped explaining things somehow when I got in this state, when I was blown up, all my veins and arteries moved from the inside where they belong to the outside so that as that army doc put it, I have been turned inside out in all respects."
i read purdy's first four books sometime in college, two collections of short stories & two novels. "in a shallow grave," where the quote comes from, was the last thing i read by him. as i recall, i always felt like he tried too hard to reach for the gothic, that dark & dangerous place, to illuminate modernity, like a second-rate flannery o'connor. god knows, i thought, there's been more than enough o'connor imitators. his persistence of vision makes me want to go back & read some of the later work. since he made the effort to continue into his 90s, i think some respect is probably due.
nyt obit
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