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118-848: James Otis Purdy (July 17, 1914 – March 13, 2009) was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet, and playwright who, from his debut in 1956, published over a dozen novels, and many collections of poetry, short stories, and plays. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages and in 2013 his short stories were collected in The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy . He has been praised by writers as diverse as Edward Albee , James M. Cain , Lillian Hellman , Francis King , Marianne Moore , Dorothy Parker , Dame Edith Sitwell , Terry Southern , Gore Vidal (who described Purdy as "an authentic American genius"), Jonathan Franzen (who called him, in Farther Away , "one of

236-854: A boarding house of which she was proprietress. Purdy earned a Bachelor of Arts teaching degree in French from Bowling Green State College in 1935, and taught French at the Greenbrier Military School in West Virginia. Then he studied at the University of Chicago , where he earned a master's degree in English in 1937. He joined the United States Army in May 1941. After serving in the Army, he studied Spanish at

354-707: A Distinguished Professor of Playwriting and held the Lyndall Finley Wortham Chair in the Performing Arts at the University of Houston . His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Samuel French, Inc. Albee established the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc. in 1967, from royalties from his play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? . The foundation funds the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center (named after

472-579: A brief small renaissance in the first decade of the 2000s, including among younger writers. As Albee wrote, "there is a Purdy renaissance every ten years, like clockwork". Shortly after his death in 2009, a book of plays, Selected Plays of James Purdy , including Brice , Ruthanna Elder , Where Quentin Goes and The Paradise Circus , was published by Ivan R. Dee. It focuses on Purdy's playwriting as being his first form of writing since childhood, when he wrote plays for his brother to perform. John Waters contributed

590-506: A close friend of English-born Muir Weissinger Jr. and his family. Albee, along with others, referred to Florence, Muir's mother, as "Mummy." For her part, Albee's mother felt he spent too much time at the Weissinger household. Albee dated Muir's sister, Delphine, and escorted her to her coming-out party. Albee and Delphine had a "long and intense relationship" while it lasted; Albee has said they were "unofficially engaged." Albee kept in touch for

708-621: A different order for the books in Nevi'im and Ketuvim . This order is also cited in Mishneh Torah Hilchot Sefer Torah 7:15. The order of the books of the Torah is universal through all denominations of Judaism and Christianity. The disputed books, included in most canons but not in others, are often called the Biblical apocrypha , a term that is sometimes used specifically to describe

826-506: A drama award at all. The two members of the jury, John Mason Brown and John Gassner , subsequently resigned in protest. An Academy Award -winning film adaptation by Ernest Lehman was released in 1966 starring Elizabeth Taylor , Richard Burton , George Segal , and Sandy Dennis , and was directed by Mike Nichols . In 2013, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by

944-772: A few historic Protestant versions; the German Luther Bible included such books, as did the English 1611 King James Version. Empty table cells indicate that a book is absent from that canon. Several of the books in the Eastern Orthodox canon are also found in the appendix to the Latin Vulgate , formerly the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Some of the stories of the Pentateuch may derive from older sources. Scholars such as Andrew R. George point out

1062-430: A great black writer from the story "Eventide", which she felt only a black man could write. After she had asked Purdy to supply more instances of his work, Purdy sent her his newly published private edition of 63: Dream Palace . Both books were designed by Purdy with his own unique drawings. Upon the additional basis of this new work, Sitwell had become convinced that he was "a writer of genius" (her words); and she obtained

1180-669: A lens for his work. The comic novels I am Elijah Thrush , Out with the Stars and Garments the Living Wear are the New York incarnations of this reflection. Abercrombie also introduced the young student to others in her circle, to Miriam Bomberger Andreas and to the industrialist and literary essayist, Osborn Andreas, both of whom would become extremely significant in Purdy's life and work. His first book, Don't Call Me by My Right Name and Other Stories ,

1298-523: A long act play, Schism , and a 500-page novel, The Flesh of Unbelievers (Horn, 1) in 1946. His formal education continued at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was expelled in 1947 for skipping classes and refusing to attend compulsory chapel. Albee left home for good in his late teens. In a later interview, he said: "I never felt comfortable with the adoptive parents. I don't think they knew how to be parents. I probably didn't know how to be

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1416-416: A long time with Florence and Muir Weissinger. Albee insisted that he did not want to be known as a "gay writer", saying in his acceptance speech for the 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation 's Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement: "A writer who happens to be gay or lesbian must be able to transcend self. I am not a gay writer. I am a writer who happens to be gay." His longtime partner, Jonathan Richard Thomas,

1534-522: A master of different kinds of American vernacular as well. In addition to his knowledge of modern European languages, Purdy knew Latin and ancient Greek, and maintained an extensive classical library. His novel In a Shallow Grave has overt classical references running throughout, as do many others. His final novel Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue echoes the story of Demeter descending into Hades in search of her daughter Persephone . The novels that beleaguered his reputation, such as Eustace Chisholm &

1652-410: A much longer, more expository experience. His roots were in drama. Purdy started writing plays as a child, crafting them to win his elder brother's approval. Purdy would act all the characters in the plays, and play them out using stick-figures, which is consistent with the early origins of Federico García Lorca . Purdy became known as a "homosexual writer" after the publication of Eustace Chisholm and

1770-502: A nonagenarian revisits events of her life refracted through both her own dementia and the differing recollections of her younger selves, is a not-quite-memory play filled with regret, resentment, entitlement, various bodily indignities". Georgia State University English professor Matthew Roudane divides Albee's plays into three periods: the Early Plays (1959–1966), characterized by gladiatorial confrontations, bloodied action and fight to

1888-579: A personal communication looking back some 25 years to Wendell Wilcox, a failed writer in the Abercrombie circle. Wilcox, who had once enjoyed a degree of success, stopped publishing at the very moment Purdy began commercial publication. Always of major significance was jazz both in Chicago and New York City. Shortly after his move to New York City, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance circle became

2006-460: A professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh , identifies the Old Testament as "a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing." He states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. By about the 5th century BC, Jews saw the five books of

2124-510: A scathing portrait of the department store heir Norman Macleish of the noted Chicago family. All of Purdy's work after Eustace Chisholm would subsequently be met with both great praise on the one side, and stern, vehement condemnation and misunderstanding on the other. In 1967, a year after the publication of the treatise to limit homosexual artists, his Eustace Chisholm and the Works  – his "undisguised" bisexual work –

2242-592: A school known as biblical minimalism rejected the historical value of the Hebrew Bible for the study of ancient Israel during the Iron Age, "but this extreme approach was rejected by mainstream scholarship." The first five books— Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , book of Numbers and Deuteronomy —reached their present form in the Persian period (538–332 BC) , and their authors were the elite of exilic returnees who controlled

2360-456: A sculptor, died on May 2, 2005, from bladder cancer. They had been partners from 1971 until Thomas's death. Albee also had a relationship of several years with playwright Terrence McNally during the 1950s. Albee died at his home in Montauk, New York on September 16, 2016, aged 88. Albee lived in a 6,000-square-foot loft that was a former cheese warehouse in New York's Tribeca neighborhood. At

2478-498: A serious commercial publisher for his work in England. She would later write the prefaces for the publication of both these works. Her reviews, pronouncements, and assessments of his further works helped him create a coterie of supporters (notably Parker and Angus Wilson ) both in England and the U.S. Purdy felt he would never have been a known writer without her: "My stories were always returned with angry, peevish, indignant rejections from

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2596-521: A set period and be followed by the other-worldly age or World to Come . Some thought the Messiah was already present, but unrecognised due to Israel's sins; some thought that the Messiah would be announced by a forerunner, probably Elijah (as promised by the prophet Malachi , whose book now ends the Old Testament and precedes Mark 's account of John the Baptist ). However, no view of the Messiah as based on

2714-436: A small apartment in a Brooklyn Heights landmarked building surrounded by dozens of framed boxing prints from the turn of the 20th century, bare-knuckled champs in the makeshift outside rings of their day. To the end of his life, he continued to dictate to a small team of devoted friends, and ascribed his continued intellectual vigor to the drinking of green tea and the avoidance of alcohol and tobacco. His advice to young writers

2832-461: A solid cadre of distinguished critics and scholars embraced his work from the start, including John Cowper Powys , Dame Edith, Dorothy Parker , and Susan Sontag , who warmly defended him against puritanical critics. Tennessee Williams was also an early admirer of Purdy's work. In January 1966, an incendiary manifesto by Stanley Kauffmann set forth a bluntly damning and prejudicial way of criticizing works by homosexual writers. The article stirred

2950-525: A son, either." In a 1994 interview, he said he left home at 18 because "[he] had to get out of that stultifying, suffocating environment." In 2008, he told interviewer Charlie Rose that he was "thrown out" because his parents wanted him to become a "corporate thug" and did not approve of his aspirations to be a writer. Albee moved into New York's Greenwich Village , where he supported himself with odd jobs while learning to write plays. Primarily in his early plays, Albee's work had various representations of

3068-475: A success-crazed culture they are never forgiven for failing to live up to their own early masterpieces. But if Edward Albee has suffered the same cruel fate as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams , he has kept on trucking". Billington wrote of Albee's 1987 play, Marriage Play , "At the end the play achieves a metaphorical resonance by suggesting that marriage is an accumulation of meaningless habits and that "nothing has made any difference". In 1991 he wrote

3186-511: A two-year period between 1965 and 1967, devastating Purdy's basis of support financially, critically and personally. "I soon realized that if my life up to then had been a series of pitched battles, it was to be in the future a kind of endless open warfare", Purdy wrote in an autobiographical sketch in 1984. At a loss to know how to proceed and with his career seemingly shattered, Purdy began looking at pictures of his long-dead relatives for solace and validation. He began to remember ever more vividly

3304-406: A western reader familiar with these literatures. In his compressed dialogue structure, Purdy was ahead of his time. Much-later writers like David Mamet , Harold Pinter , and Samuel Beckett (also an admirer) paved the way to the acceptance of works in this "distilled" style which has now become the sine qua non of the modern audience with its very different attention span. His early stories from

3422-545: A work that is already like no other." As part of the series in 1974 he published The House of the Solitary Maggot , which is often regarded as his most ambitious work. It was largely ignored. In 1978, he published Narrow Rooms (a set of violent and obsessive homosexual relationships, based in West Virginia ). This was nearly developed into a film directed by Derek Jarman in 1992 for Channel Four , but Purdy objected to

3540-404: Is a lovely, poignant and deeply felt play. In no way at all is it an easy play -- this formal minuet of death, this symphony ironically celebrating death's dominion. It is not easy in its structure, a series of almost operatic arias demanding, in their precision, pin-point concentration from the audience, and it is certainly not easy in its subject matter." In 1974 he wrote Seascape , which won

3658-669: Is based on the belief that the historical Jesus is also the Christ , as in the Confession of Peter . This belief is in turn based on Jewish understandings of the meaning of the Hebrew term Messiah , which, like the Greek "Christ", means "anointed". In the Hebrew Scriptures, it describes a king anointed with oil on his accession to the throne: he becomes "The L ORD 's anointed" or Yahweh's Anointed. By

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3776-501: Is home to the Chicago jazz scene), then to Children is All , Cabot Wright Begins , and Eustace Chisholm and the Works . Even his small-town Ohio novel The Nephew echoes the story of the boy who would never be coming home again. "Eventide" was the pivotal story which led to his becoming a published writer. His final novel Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue harks back to a remembrance of painter Abercrombie and others in her circle of artists. Narrow Rooms (1977) is, at an initial level,

3894-518: Is known, though there is plenty of speculation. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus , these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles. There is no evidence among the canons of the First Council of Nicaea of any determination on

4012-594: Is neither read nor held among the Hebrews, but does not explicitly call it apocryphal or "not in the canon". The Synod of Hippo (in 393), followed by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419) , may be the first council that explicitly accepted the first canon which includes the books that did not appear in the Hebrew Bible ; the councils were under significant influence of Augustine of Hippo , who regarded

4130-423: Is to worship , or the one "true God", that only Yahweh (or YHWH ) is Almighty. The Old Testament stresses the special relationship between God and his chosen people , Israel, but includes instructions for proselytes as well. This relationship is expressed in the biblical covenant (contract) between the two, received by Moses . The law codes in books such as Exodus and especially Deuteronomy are

4248-582: The Septuagint (Latin for 'Seventy') from the supposed number of translators involved (hence its abbreviation " LXX "). This Septuagint remains the basis of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox Church . It varies in many places from the Masoretic Text and includes numerous books no longer considered canonical in some traditions: 1 Esdras , Judith , Tobit , the books of Maccabees ,

4366-476: The Babylonian exile ) upon his people. The theme is played out, with many variations, in books as different as the histories of Kings and Chronicles, the prophets like Ezekiel and Jeremiah , and in the wisdom books like Job and Ecclesiastes. The process by which scriptures became canons and Bibles was a long one, and its complexities account for the many different Old Testaments which exist today. Timothy H. Lim,

4484-539: The Billy Rose Theatre on October 13, 1962, and closed on May 16, 1964, after five previews and 664 performances. The opening night cast featured Uta Hagen . Arthur Hill , George Grizzard and Melinda Dillon . The play won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1963 and was selected for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize by the award's drama jury, but the selection was overruled by the advisory committee, which elected not to give

4602-561: The Book of Wisdom , Sirach , and Baruch . Early modern biblical criticism typically explained these variations as intentional or ignorant corruptions by the Alexandrian scholars, but most recent scholarship holds it is simply based on early source texts differing from those later used by the Masoretes in their work. The Septuagint was originally used by Hellenized Jews whose knowledge of Greek

4720-620: The Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches comprise up to 49 books; the Catholic canon comprises 46 books; and the most common of the Protestant canons comprises 39 books. There are 39 books common to essentially all Christian canons. They correspond to the 24 books of the Tanakh , with some differences of order, and there are some differences in text. The greater count of books reflects

4838-811: The Ford Foundation (1961), and Rockefeller Foundation . He worked as an interpreter, and lectured in Europe with the United States Information Agency . Purdy was born in Hicksville , Ohio , in 1914. His family moved to Findlay , Ohio, when he was about five years old, where he graduated from Findlay High School in 1932. Purdy's parents went through a separation and then a bitter divorce in 1930 after his father lost large sums of money in investments gone bad. His mother then converted their home in Findlay to

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4956-504: The Hellenistic time (332–198 BC), though containing much older material as well; Job was completed by the 6th century BC; Ecclesiastes by the 3rd century BC. Throughout the Old Testament, God is consistently depicted as the one who created the world. Although the God of the Old Testament is not consistently presented as the only god who exists , he is always depicted as the only God whom Israel

5074-662: The Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts (both in 1996). In 2009, Albee received honorary degree from the Bulgarian National Academy of Theater and Film Arts (NATFA), a member of the Global Alliance of Theater Schools. In 2008, in celebration of Albee's 80th birthday, a number of his plays were mounted in distinguished Off-Broadway venues, including the historic Cherry Lane Theatre where

5192-769: The LGBT QIA community often challenging the image of a heterosexual marriage. Despite challenging society's views about the gay community, he did not view himself as an LGBT advocate. Albee's work typically criticized the American Dream . His first play, The Zoo Story , written in three weeks, was first staged in Berlin in 1959 before premiering Off-Broadway in 1960. His next, The Death of Bessie Smith , similarly premiered in Berlin before arriving in New York. Albee's most iconic play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , opened on Broadway at

5310-607: The Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 1971 he wrote All Over , a two-act play originally titled, Death , the second half of a projected double bill with another play called Life (which later became Seascape ). The play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre with John Gielgud directing and starred Jessica Tandy , Madeleine Sherwood , and Colleen Dewhurst . The New York Times writer Clive Barnes wrote, "It

5428-667: The Modern Jazz Quartet . The music and lives these jazz musicians were able to create from their own humble origins inspired Purdy to realize that he could create a uniquely individual voice in literature, using his American small-town speech patterns and his worlds of poverty and neglect. Abercrombie and those in her "circle" had done the same with painting. They had "taken the essence of our music and transported it to another form", according to her friend and fellow artist Dizzie Gillespie. Purdy's associations with these jazz artists and especially his meeting with Billie Holiday gave him

5546-706: The Pentateuch (Torah) , the historical books , the "wisdom" books and the prophets. The table below uses the spellings and names present in modern editions of the Christian Bible, such as the Catholic New American Bible Revised Edition and the Protestant Revised Standard Version and English Standard Version . The spelling and names in both the 1609–F10 Douay Old Testament (and in the 1582 Rheims New Testament ) and

5664-467: The Pulitzer Prize for Drama . It debuted on Broadway with Deborah Kerr and Frank Langella . It was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play losing to Peter Shaffer 's Equus . Clive Barnes of The New York Times declared the play "a major event", adding, "As Mr. Albee has matured as a playwright, his work has become leaner, sparer and simpler. He depends on strong theatrical strokes to attract

5782-652: The Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition ) use the same "standardized" (King James Version) spellings and names as Protestant Bibles (e.g. 1 Chronicles as opposed to the Douaic 1 Paralipomenon, 1–2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings instead of 1–4 Kings) in those books which are universally considered canonical: the protocanonicals . The Talmud (the Jewish commentary on the scriptures) in Bava Batra 14b gives

5900-565: The Temple at that time. The books of Joshua , Judges , Samuel and Kings follow, forming a history of Israel from the Conquest of Canaan to the Siege of Jerusalem c.  587 BC . There is a broad consensus among scholars that these originated as a single work (the so-called " Deuteronomistic History ") during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BC. The two Books of Chronicles cover much

6018-681: The Tony Award for Best Play . His works are often considered frank examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett , Eugène Ionesco , and Jean Genet . His middle period comprised plays that explored the psychology of maturing, marriage and sexual relationships. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel , credit Albee's mix of theatricality and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent postwar American theatre in

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6136-518: The Torah (the Old Testament Pentateuch) as having authoritative status; by the 2nd century BC, the Prophets had a similar status, although without quite the same level of respect as the Torah; beyond that, the Jewish scriptures were fluid, with different groups seeing authority in different books. Hebrew texts began to be translated into Greek in Alexandria in about 280 BC and continued until about 130 BC. These early Greek translations – supposedly commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus – were called

6254-408: The 1749 revision by Bishop Challoner (the edition currently in print used by many Catholics, and the source of traditional Catholic spellings in English) and in the Septuagint differ from those spellings and names used in modern editions which are derived from the Hebrew Masoretic Text . For the Orthodox canon, Septuagint titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. For

6372-424: The 1940s and 1930s were, because of their brevity, not even considered short stories at all at the time. Now this brevity of conveying a fullness and richness of experience in what Sitwell called a "marrow of form" has almost become a necessary standard. Both his "distilled" style and his reliance on dialogue to tell his story eluded the normal contemporary reader of his early days. There was an ingrained custom towards

6490-399: The American black experience is paramount to understanding him as an artist. In addition to his beginnings with Abercrombie, Van Vechten took him up when he arrived in New York City and introduced him to his own important New York City circle of black artists, boxers and activists. Langston Hughes praised Purdy as "the last of the [n-word] writers" for his use of the vernacular. He was seen as

6608-450: The Catholic canon, the Douaic titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. Likewise, the King James Version references some of these books by the traditional spelling when referring to them in the New Testament, such as "Esaias" (for Isaiah ). In the spirit of ecumenism , more recent Catholic translations (e.g. the New American Bible , Jerusalem Bible , and ecumenical translations used by Catholics, such as

6726-497: The Hebrew Bible, and are also Jewish in origin. Some are also contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls . In general, Catholic and Orthodox churches include the deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament. Most Protestant Bibles do not include them in their canon, but some versions of Anglican and Lutheran Bibles place such books in a separate section called Apocrypha . The Old Testament contains 39 (Protestant), 46 (Catholic), or more (Orthodox and other) books, divided, very broadly, into

6844-488: The Hebrew, Greek and Latin versions of the Hebrew Bible are the best known Old Testaments, there were others. At much the same time as the Septuagint was being produced, translations were being made into Aramaic, the language of Jews living in Palestine and the Near East and likely the language of Jesus : these are called the Aramaic Targums , from a word meaning "translation", and were used to help Jewish congregations understand their scriptures. For Aramaic Christians, there

6962-488: The Jewish Torah ); the history books telling the history of the Israelites, from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon ; the poetic and " Wisdom books " dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world; and the books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God. The books that compose the Old Testament canon and their order and names differ between various branches of Christianity . The canons of

7080-425: The New York slick magazines and they earned if possible even more hostile comments from the little magazines. All editors were insistent that I would never be a published writer." Through all his work, Purdy dealt primarily with outsiders: women, blacks, Native Americans (his maternal grandmother was 1/8 Ojibway ), homosexuals (living far outside the conventional gay community) – anyone who could be seen to be outside

7198-405: The Old Testament predicted a Messiah who would suffer and die for the sins of all people. The story of Jesus' death, therefore, involved a profound shift in meaning from the Old Testament tradition. The name "Old Testament" reflects Christianity's understanding of itself as the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy of a New Covenant (which is similar to "testament" and often conflated) to replace

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7316-400: The Old Testament. Of the remainder, the books of the various prophets— Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel , and the twelve " minor prophets "—were written between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, with the exceptions of Jonah and Daniel , which were written much later. The "wisdom" books— Job , Proverbs , Ecclesiastes , Psalms , Song of Songs —have various dates: Proverbs possibly was completed by

7434-451: The Septuagint ( 3 Ezra and 3 and 4 Maccabees are excluded); the Anglicans after the English Civil War adopted a compromise position, restoring the 39 Articles and keeping the extra books that were excluded by the Westminster Confession of Faith , both for private study and for reading in churches but not for establishing any doctrine, while Lutherans kept them for private study, gathered in an appendix as biblical apocrypha . While

7552-459: The Septuagint's, and Theodotion's. The so-called "fifth" and "sixth editions" were two other Greek translations supposedly miraculously discovered by students outside the towns of Jericho and Nicopolis : these were added to Origen's Octapla. In 331, Constantine I commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople . Athanasius recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for Constans . Little else

7670-519: The University of Chicago (1944–45). He spent the summer of 1945 at the University of Puebla , Mexico, and taught English at the Ruston Academy in Havana , Cuba, in 1945–1946. For the next nine and a half years, he taught Spanish at Lawrence College , in Appleton , Wisconsin . In the mid-1950s, with encouragement and support from Miriam and Osborn Andreas and the Andreas Foundation ( Archer Daniels Midland ), Purdy returned to Chicago to pursue writing. In 1935, soon after his arrival in Chicago to attend

7788-426: The University of Chicago, Purdy, broke and without friends, met the painter Gertrude Abercrombie . She was nicknamed the "Queen of the Bohemian Artists". His vast body of work includes many works inspired by his close relationship with Abercrombie and her underground salon (which had its roots in the salon of Gertrude Stein ). During the 1930s, Purdy was one of Abercrombie's closest friends. This American incarnation of

7906-419: The Western Church, specifically as the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate , while the Churches in the East continued, and continue, to use the Septuagint. Jerome, however, in the Vulgate's prologues , describes some portions of books in the Septuagint not found in the Hebrew Bible as being non- canonical (he called them apocrypha ); for Baruch , he mentions by name in his Prologue to Jeremiah and notes that it

8024-429: The Works and Narrow Rooms , merely restate in a modern context the psychology of Dionysus set forth in The Bacchae by Euripides . The outer texture of his work is realistic while the deeper and more elusive interior reveals a mythic, almost archetypal trail. Its great age is apparent; its history is clearly rooted in the classics and in the Old Testament. Thus his work can be very American but it can be appreciated by

8142-478: The Works was the fact that, by the time of publication of these novels, all his immediate family, his friends and his supporters had died. This included Sitwell, Van Vechten, Parker, Powys, and Purdy's brother who had been a noteworthy actor in New York City and very important to his development in literature. This eliminated all the defenders of both him as a writer and the two novels themselves. Osborn Andreas, his patron, had also died. All these deaths occurred within

8260-422: The Works . Gore Vidal indicates that one obstacle to his more widespread recognition was the impossibility of reconciling his work that was labeled and published as "gay" to some of his other works and especially to the Faulkneresque novels based on his ancestors. Even today, as Vidal asserts, it is a problem that needs a solution. Sitwell had recognized this when she stated that Purdy "has enormous variety". From

8378-451: The arts community. This finger in the wind of the so-called liberal critical establishment actually reflected the deep nature of an institutionalized prejudice throughout the media. Soon afterwards, Purdy set out to write a novel of what he experienced in Abercrombie's Chicago scene of the 1930s. This time it was to reflect his fitfully terminated friendship with Wendell Wilcox, a writer of minor achievement in their circle. It would also include

8496-489: The attention of the audience, but the tone of the writing is always thoughtful, even careful, even philosophic." He compared his work alongside Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter . Albee continued to write plays including Listening (1976), Counting the Ways (1976) before a brief break before The Lady from Dubuque (1980) which had a short run on Broadway. He wrote the three act play The Man Who Had Three Arms (1983) which

8614-616: The books in the Catholic and Orthodox canons that are absent from the Jewish Masoretic Text and most modern Protestant Bibles. Catholics, following the Canon of Trent (1546), describe these books as deuterocanonical, while Greek Orthodox Christians, following the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) , use the traditional name of anagignoskomena , meaning "that which is to be read." They are present in

8732-524: The canon as already closed. In the 16th century, the Protestant reformers sided with Jerome; yet although most Protestant Bibles now have only those books that appear in the Hebrew Bible, the order is that of the Greek Bible. Rome then officially adopted a canon, the Canon of Trent , which is seen as following Augustine's Carthaginian Councils or the Council of Rome , and includes most, but not all, of

8850-637: The canon. However, Jerome (347–420), in his Prologue to Judith , claims that the Book of Judith was "found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures". In Western Christianity or Christianity in the Western half of the Roman Empire , Latin had displaced Greek as the common language of the early Christians, and in 382 AD Pope Damasus I commissioned Jerome ,

8968-579: The casting of Kevin Collins. Jarman refused any other actor, so the film stalled. The 1997 publication of Purdy's final novel, Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue , reflected a reappraisal of his work. A New York Times review assessed him as a "singular American visionary". On the last reprints of several of his books, a further essay by Gore Vidal in The New York Times , entitled "The Novelist As Outlaw," framed him as "an authentic American genius". In 2005,

9086-407: The circle of "normal" acceptability. His final short story, Adeline , written at age 92, is a tale of transgender acceptance. Much of his early work takes place in extreme poverty, and is located in a small-town, heightened American vernacular. In the beginning of her assessment of him, Sitwell felt he was always writing the black experience without necessarily mentioning race. Purdy's association with

9204-514: The composer William Flanagan , but better known as "The Barn") in Montauk, New York , as a residence for writers and visual artists. The foundation's mission is "to serve writers and visual artists from all walks of life, by providing time and space in which to work without disturbance." Albee was gay and stated that he first knew he was gay at age 12 and a half. As a teen in Larchmont, Albee became

9322-498: The country vernacular and way of speaking of his great-grandparents. He began to create, in association with these individuals and their stories, a voice that Paul Bowles would call "the closest thing we have to a classical American colloquial". Regarding Sleepers in Moon Crowned Valleys , Gore Vidal stated in his New York Times essay, "Each novel stands entire by itself while the whole awaits archeology and constitution of

9440-630: The creative parlour had at the center those who were to become the jazz greats: Percy Heath , Sonny Rollins , Erroll Garner , Dizzie Gillespie , Charlie Parker , Max Roach , Miles Davis and Sarah Vaughan . Purdy attended the all-night, weekend gatherings where bebop and jazz were improvised by these greats (many times with Abercrombie at the piano). The concerts impressed him deeply. "Through these jazz singers and musicians, who would often stay with Abercrombie, young Purdy received an intensive education in African American music and culture." Indeed,

9558-556: The early 1960s. Later in life, Albee continued to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002). Edward Albee was born in 1928. His biological father left his mother, Louise Harvey, and he was placed for adoption two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee , the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee ;II , owned several theaters. His adoptive mother, Reed's second wife, Frances (Cotter),

9676-427: The experience of the "New Negro Renaissance" is reflected in all his early work. It begins with the short story "Eventide" printed first in the private collection Don't Call Me by My Right Name and then commercially in the collection Color of Darkness (Teeboy who would never be coming home again, played the tenor saxophone at The Music Box and had his hair made straight), to the novella 63 Dream Palace (63rd Street

9794-401: The following blurb on the cover: "James Purdy's Selected Plays will break your damaged little heart." Further evidence of the twenty-first-century revival of Purdy's reputation is Oxford University Press 's publication of his biography by Michael Snyder. Snyder says that "Purdy got under the skin of America to something deep, universal and macabre." For nearly 50 years he lived and wrote in

9912-692: The high incidence of black figures in Purdy's work went unnoticed by critics and reviewers because they were so thoroughly integrated. Equally important was his intensive study as a young boy of the Old Testament in the King James Version of the Bible as well as the Complete Works of William Shakespeare . All were key in making Purdy the writer he became. For quite some time during his Chicago years, Purdy lived in Abercrombie's "ruined" mansion, with members of

10030-461: The insight as well as the confidence to move from an upstart and lost boy, prone to running wild, to a world-class writer and artist. His relationship to the painters in Abercrombie's circle of magic realists Ivan Albright , Dudley Huppler, Karl Priebe , Julia Thecla , and John Wilde helped develop the strokes of imagery he would use to create his own version of an American " magic realism " in literature. The influence of Chicago's jazz scene and

10148-570: The leading scholar of the day, to produce an updated Latin Bible to replace the Vetus Latina , which was a Latin translation of the Septuagint. Jerome's work, called the Vulgate , was a direct translation from Hebrew, since he argued for the superiority of the Hebrew texts in correcting the Septuagint on both philological and theological grounds. His Vulgate Old Testament became the standard Bible used in

10266-605: The medium of the American song. In an autobiographical sketch in 1984, Purdy stated, "My work has been compared to an underground river which is flowing often undetected through the American landscape". He received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 1991. Edward Albee Edward Franklin Albee III ( / ˈ ɔː l b iː / AWL -bee ; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016)

10384-656: The metaphorical death; the Middle Plays (1971–1987), when Albee lost the favor of Broadway audience and started premiering in the U.S. regional theaters and in Europe; and the Later Plays (1991–2016), received as a remarkable comeback and watched by appreciative audiences and critics the world over. According to The New York Times , Albee was "widely considered to be the foremost American playwright of his generation." The less-than-diligent student later dedicated much of his time to promoting American university theatre. He served as

10502-595: The most undervalued and underread writers in America"), A.N. Wilson , and both Jane Bowles and Paul Bowles . Purdy was the recipient of the Morton Dauwen Zabel Fiction Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1993) and was nominated for the 1985 PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel On Glory's Course (1984). In addition, he won two Guggenheim Fellowships (1958 and 1962), and grants from

10620-802: The novel that had held Purdy's reputation at bay for decades, Eustace Chisholm and the Works , received the Clifton Fadiman Award at the Mercantile Library . Given to overlooked novels, the prize was presented to Purdy by Jonathan Franzen , who declared in his speech, "Mr. Purdy’s novel is so good that almost any novel you read immediately after it will seem at least a little bit posturing, or dishonest, or self-admiring, in comparison." Following several reissues of previously out-of-print novels, as well as Vidal's appreciation in The New York Times Book Review , Purdy's work again enjoyed

10738-458: The patriarchs" and "the unified conquest of the land" were widely accepted in the United States until about the 1970s. Contrarily, Grabbe says that those in his field now "are all minimalists – at least, when it comes to the patriarchal period and the settlement. ... [V]ery few are willing to operate [as maximalists]." In 2022, archaeologist Avraham Faust wrote that in the 1990s

10856-469: The play Three Tall Women , a two act play that premiered at the Vienna's English Theatre about three unnamed women. The play was revived in 2018 directed by Joe Mantello starring Glenda Jackson , Laurie Metcalf , and Allison Pill . The 2018 production received the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play . Allison Adato of Entertainment Weekly wrote of the play, "Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, in which

10974-422: The playwright directed two of his early one-acts, The American Dream and The Sandbox . Honorary awards " Edward Albee ". Charlie Rose , May 27, 2008. Old Testament The Old Testament consists of many distinct books by various authors produced over a period of centuries. Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections: the first five books or Pentateuch (which corresponds to

11092-465: The same material as the Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic history and probably date from the 4th century BC. Chronicles, and Ezra–Nehemiah , was probably finished during the 3rd century BC. Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments contain two (Catholic Old Testament) to four (Orthodox) Books of the Maccabees , written in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. These history books make up around half the total content of

11210-508: The similarity of the Genesis flood narrative and the Gilgamesh flood myth . Similarities between the origin story of Moses and that of Sargon of Akkad were noted by psychoanalyst Otto Rank in 1909 and popularized by 20th-century writers, such as H. G. Wells and Joseph Campbell . Jacob Bronowski writes that, "the Bible is ... part folklore and part record. History is ... written by

11328-600: The splitting of several texts ( Samuel , Kings , Chronicles , Ezra–Nehemiah , and the Twelve Minor Prophets ) into separate books in Christian Bibles. The books that are part of the Christian Old Testament but that are not part of the Hebrew canon are sometimes described as deuterocanonical books . These books are ultimately derived from the earlier Septuagint , the earliest extant Greek translation of

11446-446: The start, his work had often been at the edge of what was printable under American censorship. The major US publishing houses rejected his two early books 63: Dream Palace (1956), and Colour of Darkness (1961), which had to be printed privately abroad. The publishers, according to Purdy, believed that he was insane. In 1972, the supposedly liberal New York literary establishment was outraged by his I am Elijah Thrush . Although his work

11564-448: The stories his grandmother and great-grandmother told him when he was a child, about eminent people, mostly women, and most often on the outside of a hidebound code of acceptance in the long-ago towns of the hill country of Ohio. In 1968, he began a series of independent but interconnected books (and plays) about the characters who populated these tales from his childhood, Sleepers in Moon Crowned Valleys . In his hands, they were to become

11682-623: The style is inimitable. They feature some of Purdy's drawings, which have attracted some attention. The American composer Robert Helps , a close friend of Purdy's, used Purdy's texts in two of his works, The Running Sun and Gossamer Noons , both of which have been recorded by the soprano Bethany Beardslee . The American song composer Richard Hundley composed many songs to poems of Purdy, his friend as well of several decades in New York City. Some of his works set to Purdy's poetry, like "Come Ready and See Me", have been praised as true classics in

11800-544: The term to refer to a pledge. Further themes in the Old Testament include salvation , redemption , divine judgment , obedience and disobedience, faith and faithfulness, among others. Throughout there is a strong emphasis on ethics and ritual purity , both of which God demands, although some of the prophets and wisdom writers seem to question this, arguing that God demands social justice above purity, and perhaps does not even care about purity at all. The Old Testament's moral code enjoins fairness, intervention on behalf of

11918-491: The terms of the contract: Israel swears faithfulness to God, and God swears to be Israel's special protector and supporter. However, The Jewish Study Bible denies that the word covenant ( brit in Hebrew) means "contract"; in the ancient Near East, a covenant would have been sworn before the gods, who would be its enforcers. As God is part of the agreement, and not merely witnessing it, The Jewish Study Bible instead interprets

12036-579: The time of Jesus, some Jews expected that a flesh-and-blood descendant of David (the " Son of David ") would come to establish a real Jewish kingdom in Jerusalem, instead of the Roman province of Judaea. Others stressed the Son of Man , a distinctly other-worldly figure who would appear as a judge at the end of time . Some expounded a synthesised view of both positions, where a messianic kingdom of this world would last for

12154-548: The time of his death Albee held an expansive collection of fine art, utilitarian works and sculptures. Albee was especially interested in artworks created by indigenous cultures in Africa and Oceania. Works written or adapted by Albee: A member of the Dramatists Guild Council, Albee received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama —for A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994). Albee

12272-479: The victors, and the Israelis , when they burst through [ Jericho ( c.  1400 BC )], became the carriers of history." In 2007, a historian of ancient Judaism Lester L. Grabbe explained that earlier biblical scholars such as Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) could be described as 'maximalist', accepting biblical text unless it has been disproven. Continuing in this tradition, both "the 'substantial historicity' of

12390-460: The voices and journeys of an almost mythic people of a uniquely different and undiscovered America. He would follow them in their navigation through life and circumstance. The narratives were something that could be found perhaps in the archives of a historical society in the towns set into the farm country and rolling hills of the Midwest. Through these memories there began to flow also the remembrance of

12508-457: The vulnerable, and the duty of those in power to administer justice righteously. It forbids murder, bribery and corruption, deceitful trading, and many sexual misdemeanours . All morality is traced back to God, who is the source of all goodness. The problem of evil plays a large part in the Old Testament. The problem the Old Testament authors faced was that a good God must have had just reason for bringing disaster (meaning notably, but not only,

12626-501: Was a Syriac translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Peshitta , as well as versions in Coptic (the everyday language of Egypt in the first Christian centuries, descended from ancient Egyptian ), Ethiopic (for use in the Ethiopian church , one of the oldest Christian churches), Armenian (Armenia was the first to adopt Christianity as its official religion), and Arabic . Christianity

12744-898: Was a socialite. He later based the main character of his 1991 play Three Tall Women on his mother, with whom he had a conflicted relationship. Albee attended the Rye Country Day School, then the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, from which he was expelled. He then was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where he was dismissed in less than a year. He enrolled at The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut , graduating in 1946. He had attracted theatre attention by having scripted and published nine poems, eleven short stories, essays,

12862-548: Was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified as and named the Theater of the Absurd . Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won

12980-458: Was appreciated in Europe, Purdy encountered censorship there too. Victor Gollancz could not bring himself to print the word "motherfucker" in the 1957 UK edition of 63: Dream Palace . As late as May 1990, the German government tried to ban Narrow Rooms , but received the ruling that it was a "work of the literary imagination which had no business in the courts". Although many readers were scandalized,

13098-533: Was better than Hebrew. However, the texts came to be used predominantly by gentile converts to Christianity and by the early Church as its scripture, Greek being the lingua franca of the early Church. The three most acclaimed early interpreters were Aquila of Sinope , Symmachus the Ebionite , and Theodotion ; in his Hexapla , Origen placed his edition of the Hebrew text beside its transcription in Greek letters and four parallel translations: Aquila's, Symmachus's,

13216-595: Was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972. In 1985, Albee was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame . In 1999, Albee received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a Master American Dramatist. He received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement (2005); the gold medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1980); as well as

13334-471: Was for decades a staple of the undergraduate American Literature curriculum of many American colleges and universities. If Abercrombie and the Andreases inspired Purdy to become a writer, then Dame Edith Sitwell made him a known one. When she received the privately printed edition, which Purdy had on a hunch sent to her, of Don't Call Me by My Right Name and Other Stories , she was convinced she had discovered

13452-462: Was privately published by Osborn with the Andreas Foundation. The title story is based on Andreas' wife, Miriam. His first five books, with the exception of The Nephew , were inspired by his association with Miriam and Osborn Andreas. His first novel, which set forth his own developing style of American magic realism, was praised lavishly by Dorothy Parker and others of great literary merit. It

13570-460: Was put forth. The novel is dedicated to Albee. Several high-profile critics were extremely hostile to the book, with its violent and explicitly homoerotic content. Purdy recalled in 1993 that he was "burned at the stake" in the New York Times review of Eustace Chisholm . Critically it was thrown to an interpretation of and by this new Kauffmann assessment (quoted as the source in the review) and

13688-546: Was received negatively with Frank Rich of The New York Times writing, "isn't a play - it's a temper tantrum in two acts... One of the more shocking lapses of Mr. Albee's writing is that he makes almost no attempt even to pretend that Himself is anything other than a maudlin stand-in for himself, with the disappearing arm representing an atrophied talent." Albee's plays during the 1980s received mixed reviews with Michael Billington of The Guardian writing, "American dramatists invariably end up as victims of their own myth: in

13806-560: Was to "banish shame". Purdy died aged 94, in a nursing home in Englewood , New Jersey , on March 13, 2009. In accordance with his wishes, he was cremated and his ashes transported to Northamptonshire , England, to be buried next to his benefactor Sitwell. Purdy wrote anonymous letters from the age of nine: his first was written to his mother's landlady, whom Purdy disliked. Subsequently he wrote countless thousands, many now owned by persons who have no idea of their provenance or value, although

13924-418: Was vehemently condemned on all grounds including moral ones. The "noble" hatchet type review followed exactly the policy which had been set forth two years earlier. The attack surrounding the book chilled Purdy's growing popularity though the book sold more copies than any of his other works. Combined with this critical reception (and its effect on Purdy) of both Cabot Wright Begins and Eustace Chisholm &

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