Joseph Malham Reads from his book JOHN FORD: POET IN THE DESERT

Fourth novel by Joseph G. Peterson helps establish him as the bard of contemporary Chicago literature

Peterson’s debut novel, Beautiful Piece (2009), is a raw tale of urban lost souls. Reviewers were struck by what one reviewer called “its taut, lean prose; its noir-like plot; and most of all, its rich, darkly detailed characters.” Set in Chicago during a brutal heat wave, the book hit home with a bulls-eye reminiscent of the 10 mm pistol that the book is named after …

He followed up with Inside the Whale: A Novel in Verse (2011), a fictional account of Jim, a young Irish drunkard and his disastrous exploits, all the while possessing a preternatural ability to write and recite amazing and spontaneous poetry. Publishers Weekly commented, “In addition to Peterson's narrative, plenty of Jim's actual poems appear throughout, facilitating an effortless shifting between third and first person accounts of the drunken bard's exploits.” 

Wanted: Elevator Man (2012), Peterson’s third novel, was cited in an essay from a new edited volume called The Great Recession in Fiction, Film, and Television edited by Kirk Boyle and Dan Mrozowski (Lexington Books, 2013).  Welsh scholar Daniel Mattingly’s article in the collection is cleverly entitled Crash Fiction (as in the stock market). Mattingly pairs Peterson’s book with a novel by Jess Walter called The Financial Lives of Poets (2009) for his insightful analysis and overarching theory about how bust culture has become established in modern-day America. Peterson’s novel becomes a prime example to this scholar of how contemporary fiction deals with diminished expectations of the financial meltdown, and how the middle class has been relegated to a garbage heap with no concrete means to get by. Youthful uncertainty becomes exacerbated by nationwide fiscal stagnation, as in the main character Eliot Barnes, Jr, who takes a menial job as an elevator repairman in a Chicago skyscraper. This is another iconic theme of economic collapse and limited choices. Peterson cleverly turns diminished expectations on its head with a twist as the Barnes character comes to see inherent worth in his job as an elevator man, someone who makes things work behind the scenes, and ultimate redemption. 

Here is what we are told about the book of essays edited by Boyle and Mrozowski: -- “The collected essays treat our busted culture as a seismograph that registers the traumas of collapse, and locate their pop artifacts along a spectrum of ideological fantasies, social erasures, and profound fears inspired by the Great Recession. What they discover from these unlikely indicators of the recession is a mix of regressive, progressive, and bemused texts in need of critical translation.” 

And Peterson’s fiction clearly qualifies as one of those bemused texts. His newest book, forthcoming in April 2014, called Gideon’s Confession features a main character living on handouts from a rich uncle who believes in him. All his uncle asks for is for Master Gideon to come up with a plan for how he will enter the job market and make something of himself. Gideon keeps putting his uncle off, living in deep secret fear that the checks will one day stop coming. But Gideon obstinately refuses to commit. Rachel DeWoskin, author of Foreign Babes in Beijing, Repeat After Me, and Big Girl Small had this to say about Gideon Confession: -- “Joe Peterson’s Gideon is a rollicking antihero who moves through these pages as he does through his rich uncle’s checks: quickly and lyrically. Gideon shops, drinks, and gobbles the money away, observing the world from its periphery until the checks stop arriving, the engine of his romance revs dangerously, and he is forced to make an active choice about how to live and love. Peterson's stylish, clean prose is a pleasure, and watching Gideon come of age, albeit a bit late? Absolutely delightful.”

Beyond economic catastrophe and stagnation that looms in the shadows of Peterson’s fiction, writer Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago deftly picks up on the theme of misspent youth in his advance praise for the new book: -- “The world that Gideon inhabits in Joe Peterson’s Gideon’s Confession is never less than recognizably real.  That attractive realism might at first seem to make a fantastical book like Steppenwolf, an odd comparison, but like Hesse, Peterson traces the journey through that potentially lethal combination of the self-doubt and towering self-absorption of youth, and as in Steppenwolf the escape is into love. Frankly, of the two, it is Peterson’s ending I prefer.”

An incredible eye for detail and taut, lean prose are what readers have come to expect from a Peterson effort, and in his new book they will not be disappointed. Peterson delivers an emotionally powerful parable that will appeal not only to twentysomethings unwilling or unable to commit and fit in, but also to adult readers who appreciate modern literary fiction and carefully crafted characters.