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Aaron Peck
Aaron Peck is the author of The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis and Letters to the Pacific.

Articles Available Online


The Abyss Echoes Back: Judith Schalansky’s ‘An Inventory of Losses’

Book Review

January 2021

Aaron Peck

Book Review

January 2021

Early in Judith Schalansky’s An Inventory of Losses, the narrator describes the way an ancient form of writing survived oblivion. The soft clay tablets...

Book Review

May 2018

Harry Mathews’s ‘The Solitary Twin’

Aaron Peck

Book Review

May 2018

Imagine a small fishing village on the edge of the world. Its inhabitants are progressive and content. The surroundings...

My first impression was of a tall building laid down for a nap, with all its parts nestled together side-by-side The lawn in front seemed out of place, discoloured by spots I moved into the spare bedroom of my grandfather’s house and started my new teaching job at a local college They’d hired me to teach video game environment design, but I was still too young to own real furniture On free days I drove my grandfather to his haematology appointments He navigated our route and swore at the German nurse who drew his blood in German She laughed from her belly and called him a hick, because he spoke in a dialect, just like his parents, who came from a German-speaking village in the Ukraine In the mornings I made elaborate coffees while he rested at the kitchen table, cracking his knuckles He often spoke to his friends on the phone in a low, rhythmic voice I couldn’t follow I remember wiping down the red Formica counters and thinking that perhaps the lawn was diminished due to stress Then a pox of barren patches swept up from the street, and what green remained just withered and crisped   I looked online and certain companies can be hired to paint your grass the appropriate colour, which is the solution I would have entertained, had it been my lawn One day I walked around the side of the house and found the irrigation switch turned off and taped over with a big black X I recognised this intervention as my grandfather’s handiwork, perhaps a statement about the drought, a water conserving measure, or who knows what I wasn’t too surprised   So I went to work and flirted with the product designers They wore dark-rimmed glasses and were the best dressed of anyone on staff I mentioned the immaculately restored 1950s single-story home where I’d deposited my trash bags full of shoes One of them bought me three martinis, and though he hadn’t yet seen my grandfather’s house, he described its features: A simple floor plan sprawling out instead of up, an attached garage

Contributor

May 2017

Aaron Peck

Contributor

May 2017

Aaron Peck is the author of The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis and Letters to the Pacific.

Gloria

fiction

May 2017

Aaron Peck

fiction

May 2017

Bernard, whenever he thought of Geoffrey, would remember his gait on the afternoon of their first meeting. Geoffrey walked with the confidence of a...

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poetry

June 2011

Beautiful Poetry

Camille Guthrie

poetry

June 2011

‘Being so caught up So mastered.’ Yeats     I was too shy to say anything but Your poems...

feature

November 2011

The nobility of confusion: occupying the imagination

Drew Lyness

feature

November 2011

The Oakland Police Officers Association in California said something clever recently: ‘As your police officers, we are confused.’ It...

fiction

August 2017

Lengths

Matthew Perkins

fiction

August 2017

1   I sat at the kitchen table while Valentine prepared cups of flowery, smoky loose leaf tea. Antoine...

 

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