Word: pecked
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...Dale Peck's extraordinary first book Martin and John probes these questions with maturity and eloquence. At first glance, this self-proclaimed novel looks like a collection of unrelated short stories alternating with brief italicized passages. The stories are vastly different, but appear connected by a system of names and settings: Kansas and New York provide the locales; the narrator of each is named John; Beatrice, Harry and Susan recur, although always as different characters; and each contains an enigmatic figure named Martin...
...hands of a less skillful writer, this complicated premise might have come off as writing-seminar pretense. But Peck has the talent and energy to flesh out his idea beautifully. Martin and John displays a keen eye for details and striking imagery: a drunken mother ensconced in a dark room "looked like an ice cube in rum;" on the open prairie "the sky gap(es) like an open mouth." Peck's language renders, "My face felt swollen and shapeless, like a moldy orange, as though grief had been shoved into my mouth like a handful of seeds, but I didn...
These insights sustain even the weaker sections of the book; some of the New York stories aren't as well thought out as others. But Peck usually displays a full command of the different tones he employs. The short story format allows him to try on narrative voices that range from the biting to the lyrical, and he achieves effects that recall such very different writers as Raymond Carver and Willa Cather...
...Bush presidency about 1,100 Marines were beginning to come home. Besides redeeming Bush's pledge, the move was clearly intended to prod the United Nations to hurry up in creating a regular peacekeeping force to take over from the U.S.-led ad hoc troops. American Marine Colonel Fred Peck, a military spokesman in Mogadishu, hopefully suggested that U.S. troops could begin to pass authority to the U.N. as early...
This scene, the end of William Wyler's Roman Holiday, is memorable for reasons that can never be taught in film school. Wyler had a fierce sense of emotional focus, and he had here a consummate movie star, Gregory Peck. But this great scene would have been nonsense if Peck did not have something wonderful and irreplaceable to miss. He had Audrey Hepburn...