James Purdy began to make his reputation with some stories first successfully published in England, where the praise for him had that overripe odor that characterizes a peculiar subdepartment of British enthusiasm for minor American writers…. But the stories themselves, when they finally appeared in this country in the collection Color of Darkness, emanated a hard harsh radiance….

Purdy, like Kafka, tells dreams which turn out to be stories and at the same time retain their fretful, oppressive dream quality. With all their subdividing and subtlety of mood and observation, wit and document, they are very close to the origins of literature in dreamlife. Purdy seems to cross over into the dream world and carry back his booty into consciousness.

The Nephew, like Malcolm, Purdy's earlier novel, has a farcical surface, but his picture of life in "Rainbow Center" … is pervaded beneath the comic accuracy of speech by...