Malcolm.

Long out of print, James Purdy's novel Malcolm, first published in 1959, established Purdy as "one of the greatest writers produced in America during the past hundred years" (Dame Edith Sitwell). Malcolm is the bizarre story of an innocent young man of 'exceptional beauty' who becomes involved in a series of comic and poignant adventures. Taken under the wing of a famous astrologer, an undertaker, a billionaire, a midget painter, a jazz queen, America's foremost chanteuse, and a tattoo artist, among others, Malcolm is led endlessly from protector to protector in search of his missing father, until the journey itself becomes his undoing.