So, ok. Purdy, James. Interesting fellow. I mentioned this to Kellie already, but I figure I will put this little spume of fact up. This story, from collection of same name, came out in the 50s and wasn't very big. He has since garnered a cult-like reputation. That aside, the collection is linked, I believe. As I was going thru it I saw the same characters popping up. I found out about this collection and Purdy via an article I read about this whole Carver/Lish editing row. If you haven't heard about it, Google it. The argument is worth perusing. Anyway, turns out, Gordon Lish, the editor of Carver's earlier work, i.e. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, chopped up a fair amount of Carver's work, slashing and burning, if you will. Removing 30-40% of whole stories, adding lines, removing lines, switching titles around (I believe Lish named the aforementioned collections). Well, I am obsessed with titles, and when I saw that Lish nabbed some ideas of titles from James Purdy, well, I just had to check this guy out. Sometimes a title can seal the deal for me. And how many times have any number of us discriminated between a throng of pleading stories in a journal or collection solely on the shininess or coyness of a title? Am I fetishizing a bit? I am. I am fetishizing. But it's OK! Cause here we are now. "Don't Call Me By My Real Name" is the first in the collection. Next was "Why Can't They Tell You Why?" Let me say, that this second story is worth searching out as well if only for the amazing ending. As with the story I passed out. The titles are long and winding and, in some cases, have nothing directly to do with the story, at first blush anyway. Enough hemming and hawing. Read it already!
Yrs. flushedly,
Kyle
3 comments:
I read it, already! It was dark and sad and horrible and true. As was Camp Cataract. There's a lot to be said by a good title, and therefore for one. Amy Hempel has a knack--and comes to mind right away. Her story, The Most Girl Part of You, has been on my mind lately -- but all of her stories, really. I love sci-fi titles, how they often preview the strangeness of the world in the book with the language of the book: Check out Philip K. Dick's titles , for instance.
When I love a homely title, like Homer Price or Edith's Diary, I always wonder if I love it because it's homely or because I love the book. But a part of me thinks there's something even more brilliant about a brilliant book quietly going around behind a very modest title.
The James Purdy story has left me feeling stunned, roughed up. It's interesting how quickly it begins to feel unrelenting. In this way, it reminds me of Richard Yates, a writer whose fiction first appears to be straightforward psychological realism but then turns out to be on emotional Mars, (which, one might argue, is indeed what makes it brutally realistic-it's hysterical but not implausibly so I'd say; the emotions are condensed). And it's interesting to think about Purdy as an antecedent of Carver's, even if only indirectly via Lish. Thanks for the story, Kyle. And thanks, Amy, for setting up this forum for us.
There's something elliptical and uncanny about the repetition in this story. The story sets up "There was something in the meaning [of the name Klein] that irritated her," and yet no firm meaning is attributed to the name. People observe that she doesn't really look like her husband's wife, a contention in itself fairly vague (like 'that guy doesn't look like a George,' or 'it doesn't feel like a Tuesday'), and so the name swells to try to accommodate our understanding of that. The story tries to tackle this ellusive sense of incompatibility using none of the incompatibilities themselves, only a name - a signifier - that becomes the issue instead of the issues it represents. We see power and dominance issues, issues of individuality, gender, etc. but these all become conflagrated and also attributed, absurdly, to the name. Meaninglessness assumes meaning. Very decadent.
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