Dale Peck

Dale Peck ( 2009 )

Dale Peck (* 1967 in Long Island ) is an American author and literary critic for children, young people and adults .

Life

At the age of seven, Dale Peck moved with his parents to Kansas , where he grew up. He later moved to the east coast back to the Drew University College in New Jersey to visit. He graduated there in 1989 and received a Guggenheim scholarship in 1995 . He currently (2010) teaches creative writing at The New School in New York .

In 1993 he published his first novel Martin and John . The New York Times described this novel as "a brilliant debut". This was later followed by the two novels The Law of Enclosures (1996) ( The Law of Nearness , 1998), which was processed four years later in the film of the same name by John Greyson , and Now It's Time to Say Goodbye (1998) ( Black and White , 1999). All those works that deal with research and questions of one's own identity and sexuality were received ambivalently by the critics. Salon.com celebrated Now It's Time to Say Goodbye as the "water heater" of American literature, as its plot is both "sensational and grotesque" . Although called The New York Review of Books Martin and John "surprisingly witty" , complaining but that Now It's Time to Say Goodbye "under the weight of its overloaded allegorical threatens to collapse structures" and his style a back and forth between poetry and cliché become be.

In 2003 Peck published the novel What We Lost . Hatchet Jobs (2004) was his only non- fictional book so far , in which he ironically illustrated the professional challenges and temptations for authors in the modern media age and presented the established literary criticism with a polemical counter-draft with 12 essays. In the real sense, the book only contains literary reviews, which is already suggested by the title, in German: Article that I do with a cleaver . Since then, Peck has two novels for children, Drifth House. The First Voyage (2005) and The Lost Cities (2007), published an adult novel called Sprout (2009) and a literary thriller called Body Surf (2009).

In the German-speaking area, his children's books were particularly well received. Reinhard Osteroth praised Drifthaus in Die Zeit . The first trip without reservation: “You quickly feel comfortable in this book, the first youth novel by the American author Dale Peck. Everything has measure and flow, undisguised dialogues, well-versed narration of the Anglo-Saxon school. And we still have no idea what escapades of fantasy await us. (...) Big suction up to the last page. "

Dale Peck is also a well-known literary critic, with his reviews appearing in The New Republic , Granta , Village Voice, and artforum . In doing so, he did not shy away from harsh criticism of the literary establishment and its overestimations by authors who are revered today ( James Joyce , Doris Lessing , Gore Vidal , Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon ), as he himself predicted successful authors personally and sometimes polemically or rhetorically attacks. This work also indirectly gave rise to his collection of essays in Hatchet Jobs . His formulaic and much-quoted phrase : " Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation." (German: "Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation") became a special feature of his reviews . In the following he used to apologize for this in the end, however, to revive this criticism in a nuanced form. As a result, he soon had to accept stronger criticism himself from other literary magazines such as n + 1 and, to the horror of the feature section, was slapped in public by the criticized colleague Stanley Crouch in connection with further threats and called a troubled queen˜ ( "noble queen with psychoproblems" ) insulted.

Peck's criticism made itself felt even in German-speaking literary circles; Dietmar Dath praised Dale Peck in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as those North American authors and literary critics in contrast to the ranks of those who write "confessional literature for well-read and sensitive better-offs" and, on the other hand, against the "relapse realists" who "in the course of strategic minority identity politics Revive 19th century English romance novel to put blacks, women and homosexuals on the agenda . ” His style was compared to that of Marcel Reich-Ranickis .

Peck's literary works cover a wide spectrum; he made forays into pop culture , film and television criticism. He also works as a columnist for Out magazine , a culture and literary magazine that primarily addresses a homosexual and bisexual male audience. Dale Peck has been openly gay for years.

Quote

"If I have to read another book about the Holocaust, I'll kill a Jew myself."

Publications

English

• Fucking Martin , London: Chatto & Windus, 1993, ISBN 0-7011-5673-2
• Martin and John. 1993. New edition: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006, ISBN 0-374-53030-0 .
• The Law of Enclosures. Washington Square Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0671003470 .
• Now It's Time to Say Goodbye. Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1998, ISBN 978-0374222710 .
• What We Lost: Based on a True Story. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003, ISBN 978-0618251285 .
• Hatchet Jobs: Writings on Contemporary Fiction. New Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0374530303 .
• Drift House: The First Voyage. Bloomsbury USA Children's Books, 2006, ISBN 978-1599900056 .
• The Lost Cities: A Drift House Voyage. Bloomsbury USA Children's Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1599902265 .
• Sprout. Bloomsbury USA Children's Books 2009, ISBN 978-1599901602 .
• Body surfing. Atria, 2009, ISBN 1-416-57612-6 .
• with Tim Kring : Shift. Crown, 2010, ISBN 978-0307453457 .

German

• Martin and John. Translated by Michael Hofmann . Droemer Knaur , Munich 1997, ISBN 978-3426603611 .
• The law of proximity. Translated by Hans J. Becker. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1998, ISBN 978-3426606636 .
• Black and white. Translated by Klaus Pemsel, Luchterhand Literaturverlag , Munich 1999, ISBN 978-3630870366 .
• Third house. The first trip. From the American by Katharina Orgaß and Gerald Jung . Bloomsbury , Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3827051356 .

Audio book productions

• Third house. The first trip. Read by Ulrike Möckel . Translation: Gerald Jung and Katharina Orgass. Argon, 2006, ISBN 978-3866100916 .

Reviews

• Wilhelm Kühlmann: Backfisch with gold rim. Love across America: Dale Peck knows the law of proximity. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 280, November 30, 1996, p. 34 (on Dale Peck: The law of proximity. Roman. Munich 1996)

reception

• Hee Jung Park: Martin & Joh. 4-part Manhwa ( Manga from Korea ), based on motifs from the novel of the same name by Dale Peck, Panini Manga and Comic 2007/2008, ISBN 978-3866074552

Awards

• 2010: Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Children's / Young Adult category for Sprout

Web links

• Literature by and about Dale Peck in the catalog of the German National Library
• James Atlas: The Takedown Artist . Portrait in: The New York Times . October 26, 2003

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262560/
2. ^ Rob Walker: Now It's Time to Say Goodbye . in: www.salon.com May 29, 1998.
3. ↑ Daniel Mendelsohn: Nailed! , in: nybooks.com , July 15, 2004.
4. ↑ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/jul/15/nailed/
5. ↑ Reinhard Osteroth: Where is the front door here? Dale Peck's turbulent cruise through the sea of ​​times , in: Die Zeit, August 2, 2006
6. ^ "Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation. I apologize for the abruptness of this declaration, its lack of nuance, of any meaning besides the intuitive; but as I made my way through Moody's oeuvre during the past few months I was unable to come up with any other starting point for a consideration of his accomplishment. (...) All of which may be just a long way of saying that I hate Rick Moody's books, but there is always a moment in each one of them when I get mad at myself for hating them. And then, alas, the moment passes. ” From: Dale Peck: The Moody Blues. The Black Veil: A Memoir With Digressions By Rick Moody, in: The New Republic , July 1, 2002
7. ↑ The Intellectual Situation, in: www.nplusonemag.com ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 203 / page 33, September 1, 2004
9. ↑ Dietmar Dath: Modern moan. Dale Peck stirs up literary criticism - not only in New York, in: FAZ from September 1, 2004.
10. ↑ Experiments in crime and punishment. in: out.com
11. ^ Richard Canning: Hear Us Out: Conversations with Gay Novelists. Columbia University Press 2003, pp. 327-347, ISBN 0-231-12867-3
12. ↑ http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/20110519/ts_dailybeast/14191_dalepecksayswritersandreadersmustfightagainstpublishingindustry ( Memento June 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
13. ↑ http://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/24818.html
14. ↑ www.gay-and-lesbianbooks.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and www.paninicomics.de  
15. ↑ Tony Valenzuela: 22nd Annual Lambda Literary Awards Winners Announced. In: Lambda Literary. May 28, 2010, accessed March 26, 2019 .