Hyperion - Nietzsche Circle
Hyperion - Nietzsche Circle
Hyperion - Nietzsche Circle
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James Purdy: An Interview 1<br />
MCP. Would you say that personal experience plays an important part in your<br />
work?<br />
P. Yes, completely.<br />
MCP. The biography I have of you is very . . .<br />
P. skimpy?<br />
MCP. Yes.<br />
P. I like it that way.<br />
MCP. Well, you were born in a little town in Ohio.<br />
P. In the country. It wasn’t a town. It was right out in the country. It had no<br />
name. If you are born on a farm in France, does it have a name?<br />
MCP. You went to the University of Chicago.<br />
P. Very briefly.<br />
MCP. And Puebla, Mexico.<br />
P. Just, you know, a few months.<br />
MCP. And Madrid.<br />
P. That’s wrong. I lived in Madrid. But I never went to school there. That’s not<br />
correct. About six months. I went there in 1937. But I really don’t like to talk<br />
about my biography. I wish now I had written anonymously.<br />
MCP. Do you think there are some facts in your biography that are of some<br />
importance for your work?<br />
P. No. I think it should all be just the work. I envy the Spanish picaresque<br />
novels because they don’t know who wrote them.<br />
MCP. I noticed that you published Jeremy’s Version in 1970, as the first part<br />
of Sleepers in Moon Crowned Valleys, then I am Elijah Thrush, then the<br />
second part of Sleepers, 2 and then In a Shallow Grave. Also during the same<br />
Previous Page:<br />
Photograph of James Purdy is by Stathis Orphanos.<br />
<strong>Hyperion</strong>—Volume VI, issue 1, March 2011 124
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