Purple America

by Rick Moody

Book Overview

On the occasion of the paperback release of Demonology, Back Bay Books takes pleasure in making all four of Rick Moody's acclaimed earlier works of fiction available in handsome new paperback editions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316559776
• ISBN13: 9780316559775
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

I think some people miss the point on this one...

... the language is tricky at times, and he likes to get into those categorical lists, which may come across as tangential wandering, but to me its quite brilliant. The first five or so pages count as probably among the best writing I have ever read. Very meditative, like an incantation, a style which resonates throughout the book. I guess the only reason I'm writing this review is becasue this book needs to be read and studied; not enough people recognize its beauty. It's easy to read it quickly and not let it get to you. Read it slowly. A great improvement over Garden State, I think, and just as if not more satsifying than The Ice Storm. Please read it.

Dark? Sure, but also compassionate and full of heart.

Moody took on a huge challenge in building a book around a character without any obvious appeal and in a dark milieu. He manages the challenge brilliantly and has written one of the best novels I've read in years. I noticed another customer questioned the comparison to Cheever that some reveiwers have made. I think it is a very apt comparison, to all of Cheever's work, but especially to FALCONER.

Comparison

I don't know about the Cheever comparisons, but "Purple America" is brilliant in much the same way as David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest." Best fiction i've experienced in years... albeit not for everybody.

A stunning novel

Purple America is the finest novel I've read in several years. Moody does just about everything right here, from the language (unlike some, I enjoyed the italics, which worked both rhythmically and to bring attention to certain _key phrases_ that might otherwise read as received-language cliches) to the characters (whom he obviously loves -- despite, if not because of, their dysfunctions) to the many layers of meaning in the tale. His take on America is dead-on: Americans, the "chosen ones" of a land that would place its faith unironically in something so ridiculous as Manifest Destiny, are finally reaping what they've sown. Everywhere, there are the toxic results of the choices we've made as individuals and as a society: in individuals such as Hex (love how "Dexter" -- as in "dexterous" -- has been warped here) and his mom and his stepdad, all of whom put far too much energy into achieving chemically altered states of mind; in the rel! ationships between individuals, which are tragically doomed to a lack of completion because of our human inability to fully communicate (love that neither Hex nor his mom can get out an intelligible sentence); and in society, which is poisoning the promised land in its endless need for "more." But what I love most about this book is its subtle religious message (read the first line, then note the baptism in poison at the end); no matter how much these characters are in pain, how foolishly they act, there's still a grace to them, a feeling of hope for them (and by extension, for us, for America -- the country is sick, Moody seems to be saying, but there's still a chance it might pull through). Pulling this off is Moody's most admirable achievement. This is a great book.

Moody's like the off-duty cop who uses his siren to get home

Certain metaphors ought to come with expiration dates, no less than milk or medicine. Rick Moody's third novel, "Purple America," is an ambitious, funny, beautifully written book whose prevailing metaphor -- the faltering promise of the nuclear age, and behind it the decline of the American nuclear family -- has begun to curdle. The military and civilian uses of atomic physics have been with us for only half a century, but somehow their fictional uses, irresistible over the years to numberless writers and filmmakers, already seem as inert as a spent fuel rod. This subtle handicap never keeps "Purple America" from succeeding as an uncommonly empathetic fugue of voices from what's left of the Raitliffe family of Fenwick, Connecticut, during one night in 1992. The novel starts with awkward, stammering, prematurely middle-aged Hex Raitliffe (christened Dexter but lefthanded) fumblingly bathing his paralyzed, vaguely senile mother, Billie, in the upstairs bathroom of their once-stylish home. "If he's a hero," Moody writes with grace and compassion of Hex, "then heroes are five-and-dime, and the world is as crowded with them as it is with stray pets, worn tires, and missing keys." For the second chapter, perspective shifts to Billie. In a pattern repeated throughout the book, we at first resist such a wrench, having spent the previous pages inhabiting Hex's mind with an intimacy only very fine writing can create. But before long we are Billie's, and the subsequent sidesteps into Billie's overwhelmed second husband Lou's company, or that of Hex's unforgotten ninth-grade love, Jane, are just as wrenching. We're sorry to leave each one of them, even as the next one waits. Reading "Purple America" can feel like dancing a quadrille with four very different partners. On we go, propelled from consciousness to consciousness by Moody's prodigious gift for ventriloquism and large, supple vocabulary, readjusting to each point of view before trading it back for another. Along the way Billie asks Hex for his promise to help end her life, and Lou troubleshoots a crisis at the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant, where he works. The action of the book obeys the unities, taking place over a single night on Long Island Sound, but this doesn't keep Moody from flashing back twice to the letters of Hex's late father, who worked on the Manhattan Project in what seemed the golden age of atomic experimentation, long before it became such a Millstone around the national neck. These brief interludes hold the key to "Purple America's" portentous title, in which the colors of an atomic blast -- and of Billie's favored household decorating accent -- combine to suggest an America where purple now connotes garishness and violence, instead of the regal confidence it once did. The climax avoids sentimentality, perhaps even more rigorously than an emotionally invested reader might wish. Connecticut character studies an