Dale Peck is the author of twelve books in a variety of genres, including Martin and John, Hatchet Jobs, and Sprout. His fiction and criticism have appeared in dozens of publications, and have earned him two O. Henry Awards, a Pushcart Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. He lives in New York City, where he has taught in the New School's Graduate Writing Program since 1999.
Praise for Visions and Revisions
A Flavorwire Best Nonfiction Book of 2015
A Bay Area Reporter Best LGBT Nonfiction of 2015 Selection
"Peck offers a flinty-eyed look into the heart of the H.I.V.
epidemic, from the late 1980s until the development of protease
inhibitors and combination therapies in the mid-1990s. As we would
expect, a portion of Peck’s narrative is told in the letters and
stories of those claimed by AIDS—fellow activists, friends,
lovers—and of course his work for Act Up is crucial. But the
investigation of serial killers who trolled for gay men in London
and New York provides perhaps the strongest elicitation of those
years of ignorance, discrimination and fear . . . A compelling
snapshot of the social activism that defined the era."
—The New York Times Book Review
"Peck shows himself to be a memoirist in Sontag’s mold."
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Visions and Revisions is many things at once: elegy, cultural
analysis, personal history, sexual diary and meditation on the
meaning of art, community and self . . . [Peck] offers a personal
philosophy grounded in trauma, collective struggle and a craving
for language. "
—San Francisco Chronicle
"A coming-of-age tale for both the gay community at large and a
nation coming to terms with that community’s place in American
society . . . Peck’s sharp writing moves nimbly and restlessly
between nostalgic tenderness and the stinging critiques that once
moved Slate’s Laura Kipnis to call him 'the current laureate of
critical evisceration.'"
—The Boston Globe
"A powerful testament."
—Out Magazine
"At times engrossingly easy to read and at times extremely
emotionally difficult, Visions and Revisions is so
intimate that it feels almost like reading someone’s diary. It is a
powerful reminder of how far we’ve come in our treatment of and
attitudes regarding HIV and AIDS. In addition, Peck’s smart,
compassionate, insightful book reminds us that, though that journey
has been long and hard, it is something to be remembered and to be
proud of."
—Metrosource
"Although a relatively short memoir, Visions and Revisions comes to
contain an indispensable mini-canon of cultural theory, essay, and
reportage from the crisis. But that’s just a bland, aloof way of
stating that, in almost every moment, Peck’s book asserts itself as
a bold yet considered act of militant nostalgia—the filmmaker Thom
Andersen’s term for intervening in the past in order to open up new
possibilities for the future. Peck is revising our understanding of
the crisis as much as reading its history aloud."
—Jonathon Sturgeon, Flavorwire
"Both compelling and unsettling."
—Interview Magazine
"A brilliant memoir . . . Visions and Revisions gives us intense
flashes of intimacy, revelations most writers wouldn't have the
balls to put on paper . . . The best moments come when Peck's
punchy genius fails, when a ghost suddenly steps into his writing
room, when the know-it-all puts down his sword and admits he
doesn't know how to say what he wishes he could say."
—The Stranger
"I devoured Peck’s memoir in two sittings. How could anyone, I
thought, write a book that seemed such an unapologetic and deeply
pleasurable blend of Kathy Acker and Theodor Adorno? The book’s
mélange of theory and anecdote was bracing."
—Annie DeWitt, BookForum
"The breadth of [Visions and Revisions] demonstrates his skill as a
journalist, social analyst, essayist, diarist, poet and novelist.
The entire first 172 pages serve as a preface and footnote both to
the concluding section, '13 ecstasies of the soul.' These final
pages elevate the entire text from sociology to poetry, theology,
and mysticism rooted in the physical experience of the body."
—Lamda Literary
"Illuminating . . . Peck has provided an intimate sense of a life
and consciousness formed during years of epidemic and
activism."
—A&U Magazine
“Dale Peck uses every weapon in his considerable arsenal, from
criticism to journalism to memoir, in order to close the gap in our
understanding of what it was like to live at the tail end of the
time when AIDS was almost always lethal. Peck’s signature tightly
controlled literary rage finds perhaps its worthiest target so far,
and the result is a book that’s both necessary and exhilarating to
read.”
—Emily Gould, author of Friendship
“History as clarion call, memoir as revolution; Visions and
Revisions is a book powerfully alive with a story that needed not
just to be written, but to be interrogated with honesty, courage
and no small amount of defiance. Unforgettable in its detail,
moving in its truth, acerbic at all the right moments and open at
its very core: Dale Peck has made something extraordinary. I closed
the book wanting immediately to read it again.”
—Belinda McKeon, author of Tender
“Dale Peck boldly returns to his own war, the terrifying plague
years in New York, and accomplishes what few have attempted: he
discovers mercy and absolution, where merited. And love. Visions
and Revisions is a transformative work.”
—David France, director of How to Survive a Plague
"Raw and heartfelt."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Death is present throughout this intense narrative, but it appears
as a theme with particularly dark power in Peck’s gutsy paralleling
of the devastating impact of AIDS on the gay community with the
horrors of gay serial killers of the era . . . Peck contrasts his
findings about this tragic and frightening time of ignorance,
discrimination, fear, suffering, and lack of compassion and support
with today’s far more enlightened attitudes toward illness, health
care, and LGBT people."
—Booklist
"[Visions and Revisions] provides a unique bird's eye view into how
one man coped with stigma and fear in the early days of a pandemic
that still rages. As more and more people—infectious disease
physicians included—have dimmer recollections of the horrible march
of HIV in 1980 and 1990s America, immersing oneself in the early
days of the plague with a colorful tour guide becomes increasingly
more important."
—Dr. Amesh Adalja, infectious disease specialist writing on his
blog, Tracking Zebra
Praise for Dale Peck
"Peck has galvanized his reputation as one of the most eloquent
voices of his generation."
—The New York Times
"Peck is not only one of the leading literary voices of his
generation, but also one of the few avant-garde writers of any age
who is changing the rules for prose fiction. His novels
simultaneously define and defy the genre."
—Los Angeles Times
"Few writers have Dale Peck's nerve. He writes without secrets,
packing his novels with the intimacies of his life, his family, his
sexuality."
—The Nation
"[Dale Peck] gives me what I look for most when I open a new book:
a world that is our world and also full of things I didn't know,
characters in scenes that are at once recognizable and
indelible."
—Chicago Tribune
Ask a Question About this Product More... |