Rick Moody’s Garden State

Rick Moody’s first novel, Garden State (1992), emerged from his time spent in two spiritual deserts: a mental hospital, where he checked himself in for alcoholism, and northern New Jersey, where he was living at the time. The resulting novel […]

Rick Moody’s Purple America

The opening scene of Rick Moody’s Purple America involves a son bathing his mother, told in just two sentences. The first reads: “Whosoever knows the folds and complexities of his own mother’s body, he shall never die.” The next sentence […]