March 13, 2009
Breaking news: James Purdy has died
by Dennis Johnson
The New York Times is reporting the death of the great avant-gardist writer James Purdy at age 94. According to the blog report, by Patrick Healy, the author — “whose dark, often savagely comic fiction evoked a psychic American landscape of deluded innocence, sexual obsession, violence and isolation” — died this morning in Englewood, New Jersey after recently breaking his hip and a “period of declining health.”
Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.