Visions and Revisions, Dale Peck
Visions and Revisions, Dale Peck
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Visions and Revisions
Coming of Age in the Age of AIDs

Author: Dale Peck

Narrator: Jeff Woodman

Unabridged: 5 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 04/07/2015


Synopsis

Part memoir, part extended essay, Visions and Revisions is a revolutionary look at the 1990s AIDS epidemic from ""one of our most adventurous and singularly talented writers working today"" (San Francisco Chronicle). Reminiscent of Joan Didion's White Album or Kurt Vonnegut's Palm Sunday, Visions and Revisions is a collage-style portrait of a tumultuous era that puts the listener on the streets of NYC during the early '90s AIDS crisis, also touching on such diverse subjects as the serial murders of gay men, Peck's first loves upon coming out, and the transformation of LGBT people from marginal, idealistic fighters to their present place in a world of widespread, if fraught, mainstream acceptance. Visions and Revisions capitalizes on a wave of increased interest in the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with the recent premiere of the groundbreaking AIDS documentary How to Survive a Plague. This is the first memoir by one of our most controversial contemporary writers, and it offers a jarring, street-level portrait of AIDS activism in the 1990s. Visions and Revisions will follow the Soho Press reissue of Dale Peck's debut novel, Martin and John, which received stunning critical praise, as well as our release of a new anthology he is editing. Novelist and critic Dale Peck's latest work - part memoir, part extended essay - is a foray into what the author calls ""the second half of the first half AIDS epidemic,"" i.e., the period between 1987, when the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded, and 1996, when the advent of combination therapy transformed AIDS from a virtual death sentence into a chronic, manageable illness. Visions and Revisions has been assembled from more than a dozen essays and articles that have been extensively rewritten and recombined to form a sweeping, collage-style portrait of a tumultuous era.

About Dale Peck

Dale Peck is the author of fourteen books in a variety of genres, including Visions and Revisions, 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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Alvin

A mish-mosh of personal essays, critical theory, history, erotica, and prose poetry. Worth reading because when Peck is good, he's very good, but be prepared to wish some parts had been left on the cutting room floor.......more

Goodreads review by Dan

I had to find out what all the fuss was about and read this book. It has landed a spot on my top 5 list for best memoirs. It's an intelligent, literate, thoughtful, no holds barred memoir from a man who fought in (was caught up in?) the AIDS war at ACT-UP when he was in his early 20's. Twenty plus y......more

Goodreads review by Robert

What I loved about this book were the cross-genre inclusions of material, how Peck seemed to work organically to thread together an actual fully-flushed experience of the AIDS epidemic, and the enormous impact it has had both culturally, and personally. I wish there had been less of a distant or "pr......more