The House of the Solitary Maggot

By James Purdy

Book Overview

The people of Prince's Crossing called him the old maggot. Not just because he was despicably rich, nor because he owned all their farms, or sired the wild young men who tore up the roads with their galloping horses--it was because they could not pronounce the word magnate, which Mr. Skegg assuredly was. Lady Bythewaite, his common-law wife, had a devouring love that filled her entire existence, but never affected her iron will and the implacable destiny that led from it. Only Clarence of the three sons could claim the Skegg name, and at the first opportunity he ran off to New York to change it. When he came back, it was with a new name, silent picture fame, and a deadly vengeance to act out. Owen Hawkins was the "acknowledged" son who lived with Lady Bythewaite. A delicate lad, his world included each of his family, with a devotion that was frightening. Aiken Cusworth was the bastard. A great hulking horse-tamer with the smell of the fields and animals on him, he had a single bent that yanked man and beast to the line of his terrible whim. Together, they lived in the house of the solitary maggot.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786715170
• ISBN13: 9780786715176
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.0" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Glorious!

This book heads us back in time to the early years of the American 20th Century, a small town dominated by the character of Nora Bythethwaite (surely some tribute, if tribute is the right word, to Dame Edith Sitwell who first promoted James Purdy's writings to the world). It's an aristocratic American family which takes dysfunction to such an extreme it becomes its very life-force .. like people chewing each other up, spitting each other out, yet turning the taste sensation over and over in their mouths for the intense and immediate nostalgia of it. It's somewhat like a novel existing in a landscaped womb which holds all of its characters - the outside world is vivid yet somehow irrelevant as the family members become the pain and the glory and the meaning of each others' lives. This is one of the century's most wilfully wayward and daring productions (a fusion of Ibsen and Samuel Beckett perhaps?), and it's tremendous that we have it in a new edition to herald our way into the increased madness and dysfunction of a new millennium. Hooray!