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.
