“Despite praise in his lifetime from Langston Hughes, Susan Sontag, Edward Albee, Gore Vidal, as well as – in later years – John Waters and Jonathan Franzen, Purdy … cast out by the US literary establishment,” which wasn’t ready for either his experimental style or his outré subject matter. (Nelson Algren called one of Purdy’s books “a fifth-rate avant-garde soap opera [about] prayer and faggotry.”) And Purdy’s delight in burning bridges didn’t help. – The Guardian