Visions and revisions : coming of age in the age of AIDS

Resource Information

The work Visions and revisions : coming of age in the age of AIDS represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Des Plaines Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Visions and revisions : coming of age in the age of AIDS

Title remainder

coming of age in the age of AIDS

Statement of responsibility

Dale Peck

Creator

• Peck, Dale

Subject

• AIDS (Disease) -- Treatment -- United States
• AIDS (Disease) in literature
• AIDS activists -- United States -- Biography
• Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography
• Autobiographies
• Biographies
• AIDS (Disease) -- Patients | Medical care -- United States
• Gays -- Crimes against -- United States
• Gays in literature
• Peck, Dale
• Gay authors -- United States -- Biography

Genre

• Biographies
• Biography
• Autobiographies

Language

eng

Summary

"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 of the 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. Reminiscent of Joan Didion's The White Album and Kurt Vonnegut's Palm Sunday, Visions and Revisions has been assembled from over a dozen essays and articles that have been extensively rewritten and recombined to form a sweeping, collage-style portrait of a tumultuous era. Moving seamlessly from the lyrical to the analytical to the reportorial, Peck's story takes readers from the serial killings of gay men in New York, London, and Milwaukee, through Peck's first loves upon coming out of the closet, to the transformation of LGBT people from marginal, idealistic fighters to their present place in a world of widespread, if fraught, mainstream acceptance. The narrative pays particular attention to the words and deeds of AIDS activists, offering a street-level portrait of ACT UP with considerations of AIDS-centered fiction and criticism of the era, as well as intimate, sometimes elegiac portraits of artists, activists, and HIV-positive people Peck knew. Peck's fiery rhetoric against a government that sat on its hands for the first several years of the epidemic is tinged with the idealism of a young gay man discovering his political, artistic, and sexual identity. The result is a visionary and indispensable work from one of America's most brilliant and controversial authors. "--

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Biography type

autobiography

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

• 813/.54
• B

Index

no index present

LC call number

PS3566.E245

LC item number

Z46 2015

Literary form

non fiction

Target audience

adult