From the author of the mega-selling Lessons in Chemistry comes a withering witty yet heartwarming novel about identity, ambition and the power of the written word, as a shiftless twentysomething New Yorker takes up a post at the eponymous, highly dysfunctional poetry journal. It's 1982, New York City. Crime is on the rise, muggings are in the streets, and Batter Gray, recent college graduate with a skill that no one wants - an 'ear' fr poetry - is worried about his future. While all his friends have real jobs, he's folding T-shirts at the Gap.As for love? No. Not unless you count Sallie Mae, the student loan tyrant. He hears from Sallie all the time.But when Batter gets a dream job at Peck & Peck, the most prestigious poetry quarterly in the world, his life moves into the literary fast lane. Soon Batter is knee-deep in the secret war between the two Editors in Chief, the famous Peck brothers - twins and enemies - as well as being privy to the private affairs of their thirty-nine editors, whose professed mission is the same: Find originality. Reward creativity. Burn the rest. And by 'burn', they mean incinerate. Because at Peck & Peck, 'good' isn't good enough, 'interesting' doesn't cut it, plagiarists aren't tolerated, and parolees run the mailroom.
View