Visions and revisions

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. 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 the words and deeds of AIDS activists, offering up a street-level portrait of ACT UP together with considerations of AIDS-centered fiction and criticism of the era, as well as intima