Moments of poetic magic rather than developments in plot or character make the experience of reading compulsive: ‘“Who is this?” she said, putting her hand on his face as one might touch what is perhaps a door in a dark house.’ The last word of 63: Dream Palace was ‘motherfucker’. Themes that recur in Purdy’s later work include power struggles (liable to sudden inversions), extreme emotional states (also subject to reversal), and polar contrasts of riches and poverty, youth and age. The novella’s first sentence reads: ‘“Do you ever think about Fenton Riddleway?” Parkhearst Cratty asked the greatwoman one afternoon when they were sitting in the summer garden of her “mansion”.’ I don’t know that any opening sentence can be considered in isolation a masterpiece, but this one certainly serves notice of a stylised view of the world. Her excitement persuaded Gollancz to publish a volume containing the novella (and borrowing its title) along with nine stories. Purdy then sent her a copy of his novella 63: Dream Palace, also privately printed, about which she was even more enthusiastic, acclaiming its first sentence as ‘in itself, a masterpiece’. In one version of the event, Don’t Call Me by My Right Name, the book Purdy sent from America to Italy, made the last stage of its journey supernaturally, materialising by Sitwell’s bedside when she woke from a nap. He had been making no headway until in 1956 Edith Sitwell read a privately printed book of his stories and, ravished, threw herself into finding him a publisher and an audience. ’s literary career comes with its own creation myth.

The Awkward Age by Henry James