The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

Purdy’s gift for capturing the despair in people’s lives is abundantly present in this collection of 58 stories. A wife’s disdain for her husband is exemplified in her lack of confidence that he can change a refrigerator’s lightbulb, in “Man and Wife.” The doctor of “Ruthanna Elder,” who has delivered more than 2,000 babies, attributes his insomnia to “too meticulous a memory of the subsequent lives” they led, which weighed on him like “slabs from the stone quarry.” Purdy can sum up a character in a phrase—a college acquaintance seen two decades later is described as having a body “so loose and yet heavy as though the passions and anguish of man had never coursed through it.” When he’s at his best, his brief glimpses into troubled lives are painful to read. He’s less successful when he tries his hand at fables; entries like “Mud Toe the Cannibal” and “Kitty Blue” are unremarkable. Noir fans who like nothing better than to peer into the windows of broken souls but don’t need blood to enjoy the view will agree with Waters’s note in his introduction that this complete volume (“here they all are at last”) of “perfectly perverted” stories is a treasure. (July)