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On its surface, I Am Elijah Thrush is the story of Millicent De Frayne and her sensational half-century campaign to win the love of Elijah Thrush. Elijah, after ruining the lives of countless men and women, is finally in love “incorrectly, if not indecently,” with his great-grandson, Bird of Heaven. To support an unusual habit, a young Black man, Albert Peggs, reluctantly agrees to tell their remarkable story. It is in this telling that the ambitions, desires, and true natures of Elijah, Millicent, and Albert come to light. With a delicately controlled balance of whimsy and pathos, James Purdy gives us this comedy of the heroic, the tragic, and the truly bizarre.
Met with critical bewilderment upon its initial publication fifty years ago, this new edition offers a Foreword by Robert J. Corber illuminating Purdy’s “complicated allegory” of objectification, desire, and race in the immediate post–civil rights moment.
One of the most undervalued and underread writers in America.---Jonathan Franzen
James Purdy's characters and situations linger in the memory.---Langston Hughes
[Purdy’s] style is impulsive and prodding, uniquely his own, and uniquely haunting.---Jonathan Lethem
An authentic American Genius.---Gore Vidal
A writer of the highest rank in originality, insight and power.---Dorothy Parker
"Anything Purdy writes is a literary event of importance."---Susan Sontag
One of the very best writers we have.
In his very best stories and novels Purdy has invented a poetic dreamscape where evil and naiveté collide. He is an enchanter of lost souls who delights and disturbs us with his wayward, winsome ghosts.---Jerome Charyn, Daily Beast
Mr. Purdy astonishes us with the vividness and fluency that he imparts to an extremely fanciful story . . . The effects are dazzling!
Exquisitely camp, deliberately decadent, heartless and overripe, I Am Elijah Thrush is recommended to all queer fish, black swans, prodigies, and hybrids.
James Purdy (1914–2009) was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet, and playwright who published more than a dozen novels, including Malcolm and Eustace Chisholm and the Works, as well as many collections of poetry, short stories, and plays. His work has been translated into many languages. In 2013, his short stories were collected in The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy.
Robert J. Corber (Foreword By)
Robert J. Corber is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor in American Institutions and Values at Trinity College. He is the author and editor of several books including, most recently, Cold War Femme: Lesbianism, National Identity, and Hollywood Cinema.