Purple America: A Novel [Paperback]

Rick Moody (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1997

Having fled his less than perfect home life years ago, Hal Raitcliffe returns to help his ailing mother after his stepfather walks out on her, but over the course of one weekend, Hal's good intentions wear thin as the family airs its grievances. 50,000 first printing. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Purple America begins in a bathtub and ends in Long Island Sound. In between, Rick Moody's latest novel explores the landscape of a family in crisis. Dexter (Hex) Raitliffe, a freelance publicist, returns home to care for his mother, Billie, who is dying by inches of a neurological disease that will rob her of motion, of speech, and finally of thought. Billie's second husband has left her--a fact that Hex is unaware of until he comes home--and her only hope for assisted suicide lies in her son. Unfortunately, Hex is barely able to conduct his own life, much less take his mother's. Purple America takes place over the course of a single night; in that night, Hex gives his mother a bath, reconnects with an old love, gets drunk, and goes after his stepfather to confront him, with tragic results.

As Moody weaves his tale of this fateful Friday evening, he juxtaposes themes of aging, obsolescence, and physical decline with an accident at the nuclear power plant where his stepfather works. What lifts this novel above its rather depressing subject matter is Moody's unsentimental storytelling and the soaring language with which he gives his characters voice. Purple America is by turns lyrical, tragic, ferocious, and funny, and Rick Moody is a writer with a brilliant future ahead of him.

From Library Journal

The explosive cleavage of the atom and its attendant fallout provide the arch-metaphor for Moody's third novel. Billie Raitliffe, of Fenwick, Connecticut, suffers from a paralyzing neuralgic disorder and cannot care for herself. Younger husband Lou Sloane, a nuclear plant manager, has moved out, so she calls on her middle-aged, alcoholic son Dexter (Hex). The specter of Hex's father, a Manhattan Project scientist who died of radiation poisoning, hovers perceptibly over the proceedings. In a 36-hour span, Billie is injured, Hex consummates a lingering high school crush in a bizarre fashion, and Lou presides over a nuclear emergency the day of his forced early retirement. The events do not occur discretely but are part of a chain reaction Moody engineers in an atomic experiment. He renders his findings in vivid, intense, and often unpleasant detail, effectively reviving the nuclear threat and limning its symbolic and etymological resonance with domestic breakdown (half-life, decay) without denying the humanity of the characters or the centrality of the story. Despite the occasionally overwrought prose, Moody has redrawn the suburban landscape, as defined by Updike and Cheever. Fans of both will want to discover this new country.?Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 298 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1st edition (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316579254
• ISBN-13: 978-0316579254
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,417,353 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in NYC and raised in the CT suburbs. One of my grandfathers was a newspaper publisher and the other a small-town GM dealer. I figure this is a good lineage for a writer. I went to school in Rhode Island, where I worked with some really interesting people, like Angela Carter and John Hawkes. And then I got my MFA from Columbia University in NYC. After school I worked in book publishing in New York, during some lean times. My first novel came out in 1992. Since then, I've been writing mostly. I teach now and then. I got married in 2003, to my girlfriend of many years, Amy. She's working on her MA in decorative arts history. We split our time between Brooklyn and a little island off the coast of CT.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-crafted, deliberate prose, September 26, 2001

By 

Jake Mohan (Chicago, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Purple America: A Novel (Paperback)

Moody's prose reminds me more of old-timers like Updike, Steinbeck, and Salinger, than of his contemporaries. Why? Well, first of all, it's rich, layered, carefully plotted, crafted with care. Moody is patient; he's not worried about rushing to the end of a sentence, paragraph, or chapter just so he can execute a clever postmodern sleight-of-hand. He's more concerned with the process, the care that goes into describing a suburban backyard on an autumn night, or a crowded seafood restaurant. Postmodern prose jockeys who get off on wordplay, thwarted expectations, and other narratological trap doors might be disappointed with Moody. But I'd like to see more writers doing what Moody does: blending the best of the new and the best of the old.

Purple America is a shift away from the realm of most postmodern prose: hyper and seemingy directionless narratives, cultural subversion, deconstruction of character and narrative. As I see it, Moody shares only the best devices of his postmodern peers. Like them, he is a young writer bred on the postmodern literary climate, who knows hardly anything else. But he also realizes the worth of comparatively "conventional" twentieth-century forms as explored by writers like Salinger and his ilk. In Purple America, I feel he has blended the best of both almost seamlessly. He admits that it's still all right to write a story with no disorienting chronological jump cuts. It's all right to write a story where characters' life histories are fully divulged, from birth to death. It's all right to write a story where a terminally ambivalent man is worried sick about his dying mother.

The postmodern gestures are still there, but they don't ruin the novel because they don't obscure the narrative. They exist only in service to the telling of a compassionate and well-rounded story. Moody's writing is very deliberate: Every word is there for a reason. Puns and various double meanings don't just happen-you can tell he's not being glib; they're not just insouciant tricks, they are devices enriching their context, the story. Even during excruciating and emotionally difficult passages such as the introductory scene in which Hex bathes his mother, I welcomed Moody's drawn out and meticulous descriptive technique. He cares about the reader's total apprehension of and identification with a given event in the novel. Like Hex, Moody is a quiet, obsequious provider-eager to be of service to his audience.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wasp Death, August 9, 2004

By 

Tory "toryofmaine" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Purple America: A Novel (Paperback)

Reading Rick Moody's Purple America is like spying on a dysfunctional family's bathroom, you see everything. Read this novel at your own risk, for you will experience decay and destruction with little catharsis. The writing is as well done as you could ask. The characters are well rounded and believable. My only issue with this novel is that I came to the table ill prepared to handle the depressing narration. So, read it but realize what you are in for.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I think some people miss the point on this one..., May 23, 2000

By 

Joshua S. Levy (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Purple America: A Novel (Paperback)

... 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.