James Purdy. (Photo: Bebeto Matthews/AP)

The latest issue of Hyperion: On the future of aesthetics is devoted to American novelist James Purdy, who died at the age of 94 in March of 2009. Purdy was a unique figure who operated on the margins of American literature, in his later years living as a recluse in Brooklyn after having published such novels as Malcolm (1959, later adapted into a play by Edward Albee) and Cabot Wright Begins (1965, one of the major achievements of the black humor genre of the 1950s and 1960s). Purdy was also a prolific dramatist; his plays were collected and published by Ivan R. Dee in 2009.

The issue includes new essays on Purdy’s work by Rainer Hanshe, Dr. Richard Canning and Christopher Lane, as well as a rare 1997 interview with the author conducted by Marie-Claude Profit. The entire issue can be found here; you can also find a brief description of Purdy’s life and career in Christopher Hawtree’s Guardian obituary for Purdy here, in which Hawtree identifies Purdy as a precursor to David Lynch.

CORRECTION (8 April 2011) : Hyperion editor Rainer Hanshe offers a correction to my original post here.