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Dale Peck |
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The
Pecking Order He’s been called
“brave”, “talented” and “a literary one-man
bandit”. Helen Sandler asks author Dale Peck about his new book and the
distracting storm that surrounds his work as a reviewer The New York–based
writer Dale Peck is known mainly for his novels, Fucking Martin, The Law
of Enclosures and Now
It’s Time to Say Goodbye,
which look at dysfunctional families, love between men, prejudice and AIDS.
But his latest book, What We Lost (Granta), is more of a memoir – about his father, who is
also called Dale. Part one recounts Dale Sr’s childhood, focusing on a
period when he got a break from his abusive mother and alcoholic father by
living on his uncle’s farm. Part two shows the two Dales making a visit
to the farm decades later. HS: What made you write
the story of your father’s childhood? DP: In 2001 I took a trip
with him to visit the farm where he’d lived for a few years when he was
a teenager. I’d never considered writing about it until we went there.
Then it just took me over. The day after we left the farm, I started writing
the book. The story is, at heart,
a tough one. What did you gain from writing it? On a personal level, it
brought me closer to my father, both in terms of my insight into his
experiences, and in terms of our relationship. On an artistic level, the book
reaffirmed certain things about my own writing I haven’t thought about
in a while. My fiction tends to be experimental, but I wanted this book to be
very straightforward so that my father could read it. Working on it reminded
me of my own strengths as a writer: my prose, my empathy (even for characters
I despise) and my ability to physicalise a scene. What do you want the
reader to gain from reading it? I just wanted to bear
witness to something I didn’t see, but that’s had a profound
effect on my life. What the reader makes of that is his own business. A lot
of people have told me they cried, which makes as much sense as anything
else. There seem to be a few men
writing memoirs about abusive childhoods lately. Do you feel any affinity
with the others? I don’t read many
memoirs, and I certainly didn’t want to read any while I was working on
this book. Memoirs, even more than novels, spring from such deeply personal
experiences that to generalise across the genre runs the risk of falsifying
the individual stories. I tried not to present this book as a learning
experience, or an exemplary one, which many memoirists do. So what’s the
purpose? I think the point of a
memoir is to show not how much the subject is like other people, but how
individual he is, regardless of how mundane or extraordinary his life has
been. How much responsibility
did you feel to get the story “right”? A lot, which is why I opted
to publish as non-fiction rather than fiction. But what “getting it
right” means is hard to say. For me, it meant conveying the emotional
reality of my father’s time on the farm, and his bewildering decision
to leave – and also of his memories, which are probably a little
different from what happened. Is any of it fiction? It has been fleshed out
with fictional techniques, but I felt bound to return to what was known to
have happened. How did your father feel
about you writing the book? He was very supportive. I
think he felt I was validating his own miserable childhood, after years of
complaining about mine. He was unable to read most of it because of the
terrible memories it brought up. He loves the second part though. Have you always known
you were gay? When did you come out and how did your family react? I suppose I knew I was gay
when I was 11 or 12. It seems a very long time ago now. I came out to my
friends when I was 20 and to my family when I was 22. They were pretty shitty
about it. My father and I didn’t speak for a year, my sister wanted me
to find God, my aunt said she would love me despite it. But most of that was
based on ignorance. They still have their issues, but they’ve calmed
down a lot. How does being gay
affect your writing? Oh God, who knows? Every
way and no way? I’ve read that you
planned out your writing career years ago, in terms of the novels you were
going to write. When I was a senior in
college I came up with the ideas for five novels; when I was in writing
school I added another. The first was Martin and John [published in the UK as Fucking Martin], the second was The Law of Enclosures. When I started the second, I found that a lot of
narrative questions were answered if I made the main characters the parents
of the main character in Martin and John. Based on that, I turned all six novels into a series, with the
addition of a seventh book of short stories that will sum up the previous
books. I’ve published three of the novels and the fourth, The Garden
of Lost and Found, is almost done. What’s it about? It continues what I think
of as my own personal history of the AIDS epidemic, and is a novel of New
York City as well. I’d been working on the book for three years already
when September 11 happened, which forced me to re-examine the project
considerably. I took some time off, wrote What We Lost, some short fiction and some essays, and am just
now getting back to it. Can you sum up the
controversy there’s been in the States about your critical writing, for
those Brits who’ve missed it? Basically, I don’t
like most contemporary literary fiction, and I’ve said so. I
don’t think I’m alone in my sentiments, but I am alone in
speaking out about it in a public forum, which has led to me being singled
out for attacks and slights. Part of the reason I’ve become such an
inflammatory figure is that I’ve challenged the whole project of
so-called “experimental” fiction, dating back to Ulysses. And they hate you for
it? People think I’m
getting a little too big for my britches. In America, once you’ve been
branded with a certain media identity, it takes on a life of its own, so
I’ve sat back and watched as people have discussed my critical writing
out of any real context. It’s been amusing, but also financially draining.
For an industry supposedly devoted to free speech, American publishing can be
very petty and censoring, and I’ve had to suffer the effects of a lot
of payback. Your criticism is being
collected in a book called Hatchet Jobs [New Press, May]. What do you hope readers will
get from the book? I hope they’ll see
the full scope of my concerns and nothing more. Another aspect of my
isolation as a literary figure is that I’ve refused to form a programme
or a school. I haven’t named an alternative canon or outlined a set of
guidelines for making good fiction. All I’ve tried to do is free people
from the constricting bipolar paradigm of realism v. postmodernism. Which current writers do
you most admire? Since Thomas Bernhard died,
I’d say that my favourite living writers are Toni Morrison and Joan
Didion, although Morrison’s last two books were pretty unsuccessful.
I’m also a huge fan of Kathryn Davis and Rebecca Brown, two women who
have yet to get their due from American readers. And the ones to watch? There are certain up and
coming writers I admire tremendously, including Calvin Baker, Lisa Dierbeck,
Jonathan Safran Foer, and Josh Furst, and my friend Jim Lewis is one of my
great heroes. A former student of mine, Marc Bojanowski, has a fantastic
first novel coming out later this year called The Dog Fighter. It’s a brilliant book – just
brilliant. What are your plans this
month? I’m immersed in
editing. I’m very close to finishing three different books, and want to
get them all off my plate so I can get on to a new novel. What are you doing after
this interview? I’m going to the gym. © Helen Sandler 2004 This article first appeared
in Gay Times, April 2004 |
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