James Purdy's the nephew - A gay novel without gay characters: A few remarks on the use of thematic criticism

Abstract

Based on an analysis of James Purdy's novel The Nephew (1960), the paper attempts to formulate a reliable criterion for the identification of the works of gay literature. Even though none of the characters in the novel proves to be gay, the novel can be classified as a gay novel because homosexuality features as what Boris Tomashevsky called a bound motif and cannot be safely removed. However, as Purdy's novel illustrates, the presence of other motifs may resonate with other common themes and issues in gay literature as well as in the experience of gays, which shows that, unless forced, the borders of gay literature should not be delineated by an answer to a simple yes-no question.