Out with the Stars

by James Purdy

Book Overview

Following the discovery of an anonymous libretto, composer Abner Blossom comes out of retirement to write an opera based on the life of the infamous novelist-turned-photographer Cyril Vane. But those who knew Vane and his Russian-born wife, the silent screen star Madame Olga Petrovna, are prepared to go to any lengths to suppress the truth about them. Vane's dark secret follows him to the grave, but his jealous and vengeful widow and her faded cronies...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872862844
• ISBN13: 9780872862845
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: City Lights Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

a proto-gothic great

One of the great New York novels. If you're an admirer of any sort of baroque sensibility, then this is a must-read. Deeply cultured, deeply weird, and deeply original, James Purdy gives us a tour de force of compression, (not a quality usually associated with baroque, I'll agree), spinning a dreamy web around an idea of a certain era in the city's artistic life. These characters will live with you for decades, if you invite them in....