James Wright Books

James Purdy, the Ohio-born novelist, short story writer, poet and playwright, has written many powerful, strange, disturbing, funny and unforgettable works, and "Cabot Wright Begins" is one of his best. I was introduced to it in an American Literature course when I was a college student in the early 1970s. Its savagely funny and biting critique of American business and sexual mores stunned me. I have read the novel several times, as well as almost all Purdy's fiction. There's something wonderfully disorienting about his style and worldview. He's also hard to categorize --- regionalist? fantasist? realist? gay?-- and therefore to market, the result being that far too readers know of this unique writer. "Cabot Wright Begins" is a great place to start for any reader who wants to encounter James Purdy, a weird, wise and wonderful writer whose work makes much American fiction look like pabulum.