Visions and Revisions: Coming of Age in the Age of AIDs

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.