Jedediah Purdy
Biographical Information
Jedediah Purdy was born and raised in Calhoun County, West Virginia. His parents owned a farm near the town of Chloe, and the young man spent his childhood exploring the woods and meadows and working the farm along with his parents and younger sister. He did not attend the local schools, instead being taught by his parents and by voracious reading. He attended Calhoun County High School for a year, but found that he did not fit in-he did not understand the realities of teenage pecking orders and few teens shared his interests in politics and justice. He left West Virginia age fourteen to attend Phillips Exeter Academy, the only private school he knew of. After completing high school, he returned to West Virginia, working as a carpenter and getting involved with environmental politics. He left West Virginia again to attend Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude in 1997 with a degree in social studies.Purdy joined the writing staff of The American Prospect and enrolled at Yale University, studying law and forestry. His articles range in subject from that irony of America to the fate of modern agriculture, environmental sustainability, and the place of work in American culture. He spent the summer of 1999 as a faculty member at the Century Institute as part of a program on America's liberal and progressive political traditions.
His first book, For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America, was published in Alfred Knopf in 1999. The book generated an immediate media firestorm as critics rushed to mock or to praise the earnest young man. Purdy himself describes For Common Things as being about, among other things including irony and mountain top removal, "growing up in West Virginia in a Calhoun County community of farmers, carpenters, artists, thinkers, and activists." Jeff Quinn of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram called the book "a call for readers to stop distancing themselves from commitment-emotional, social, political."
Purdy is currently a student at Yale University, studying environmental and constitutional law. He continues to write regularly for The American Prospect and other publications.
Critical Responses
Few first-time authors generate the kind of critical outpouring the greeted the publication of For Common Things. Reviewers for Harpers, The New York Observer, and other national publications criticized the young writer's sincerity and naiveté. Commenting on one selection, Roger Hodge of Harpers said "A set of sayings that are as relentlessly unmemorable as they are banal, much like the book to which they belong." Hodge went on to say that "Down-home piety is no substitute for natural wit." Writing in Graffiti, a West Virginia newspaper, Purdy replied to Hodge's review, saying that "It is a rare and arresting event when an attack on a book perfectly demonstrates the thesis of the book. For Common Things is partly to argue that earnest speech is difficult because we live in a time when it is easily ridiculed." Like Hodge, other critics attacked Prudy's thinking and writing. Adam Belgley, writing in The Observer, plaintively remarked "My uncertain hope is that Jedediah Purdy is no harbinger of things to come. If he is, get ready for a gassy, sanctimonious post-ironic age."
Other critics responded more favorably to Purdy's "down-home" wisdom. Kirkus Reviews hailed him as a "fresh and vibrant voice" and Gary Dorrien of Christian Century commented that For Common Things "makes a literate plea for the active preservation of the things we hold in common or, eventually, lose altogether."
Works Published
For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America
Selected Bibliography
Dorrien, Gary. For Common Things (book review). Christian Century, November 17, 1999.Hodge, Roger D. Thus Spoke Jedediah. Harpers Magazine, September 1999.
Kirn, Walter. Optimist in a Jaded Age. Time, September 20, 1999.
Stein, Joel. In Defense of Irony. Time, Oct 4, 1999.
Author Website
none available