I have just finished On Glory's Course, James Purdy's hilarious, venial, and titillating novel from 1984, filled with small-town intrigues somewhere in the midwest of the 1930s. I've read House of the Solitary Maggot, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Jeremy's Version, 63 Dream Palace, and The Complete Stories. And believe you me, I am in total disagreement with the New York Times. This book, On Glory's Course, is the best I've read of his, and his books are always unpredictable, brilliant, and gothic to say the least.
This is from the back cover:
"Somewhere in the Midwest in the 1930s languished Fonthill, a boom town after the boom has subsided. The town's fears and fascinations focus on Adele, a wealthy faded beauty who goes to the movies in the afternoon and surrounds herself with gentlemen callers at all hours of the night. This scandalous behavior, along with her search for the illegitimate son she gave up a birth, keeps Fonthill's tongues wagging.
"Only James Purdy could have created the world of Fonthill. His marvelous array of characters, with their passionate but not quite erotic relationships, comic and kinky obsessions, and intertwined fates, are at once outrageously eccentric and disturbingly familiar."
Perhaps you might find whispers and hints of Harry Crews or William Goyen or Barry Hannah, but I assure you Purdy is an original.
Consider this one diatribe from the Widow Hughes (Rosa), an aged eccentric but powerful old lady whose husband the Reverend Hughes was a lecherous preacher of the highest sort, as she addresses Adele [one of the two main characters] about a nasty old Judge Hitchmough who got Adele expelled from the most exclusive social club in town. Please keep in mind Rosa and Adele are descendants of the town's oldest and wealthiest families.
Adele pulled out a cigarette from a jewel-studded holder and, without asking permission, lit it. Then, when Rosa said nothing, she began to inhale and exhale loudly the thick Turkish smoke.
"I could not let your Daddy look down from heaven and see you ousted by some little cattle-boat immigrant turned jurist, now could I? Much as I disapprove of you, and let me digress here for a moment. Cigarette-smoking I believe is right for you because you have spread your legs on the highways and byways so often I will not quibble with you over the tobacco habit. Better smoke at your age than open your lips to even fouler practice...
But to the point. I could not allow old Hitchmough to best us. He called me on the phone today, come to think of it, and told me in that bleating voice of his he was resigning from the club. I replied, 'Judge, resignation is not quite the ticket here. What I am about to say I say regretfully, as a Christian, but since you are not a Christian but a lawyer, God will overlook what I advise here. Suicide is your only path to hone. No, you heard me aright, Judge. Resign, of course, but kill yourself immediately after.'"
"But I did not bring you [Adele] here to tell you how vile you are. After all, you rehearse that day and night and are better acquainted with your sins than I could be if i watched you fro the alley facing your bedroom. I want to give you something.
"Go along now my dear. Don't kiss me, though, on your way out. I don't know where your mouth has been last. And Dr. What's-His-Name recently told me half the town has syphilis in the catching phase. You're welcome to those jewels, but don't thank me. I know you're incapable of gratitude, but we are the last of the aristrats. The river of hoi polloi is waiting for us to step down. Our mansions and fields and farms and rivers will be overrun with their offspring. They will tear everything beautiful and starlit to smithereens. Go on, now, leave Adele. I want to nap a while. But Judge Hitchmough must kill himself. He has not right to live. Goodbye my dear, and enjoy your jewels and your young men."
Purdy, James. On Glory's Course, New York: Penguin Books, 1984.
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