Imagine your life as a series of stories. The only common thread being the names of the characters and a similar scar or a turn of phrase. Rearrange, reorganize, and reenact... same inevitable end. Dale Peck's first novel, Martin And John, is thin but powerful. The quotes seem slight when extracted, but not in their proper place in the novel:
You can have your dreams, he'd said in the kitchen, of how life should be and what your ideal lover should look like and how your fist time should go, but he knew--and I do too, now--that you'll never get it, or never be able to hold on to it if you do. Not in this life, he'd told me: only when you're dead.
"No," I'd told him, "it's not the old days anymore." "Don't act like a little boy," he said. "There never were any old days. There's no difference between then and now."
Peck has earned quite a reputation recently for pushing down the pillars of contemporaryliterature. Nothing wrong with that since renowned often need a knock on the chin.
