THE BEWILDERED
April 2005
MacAdam/Cage
May 2005 The Believer -- A
Review of The Bewildered
Peter Rock has spent the last few years, and his last few novels, exploring
“different ways of life.” He became a psychiatric trial “lab
rat” while researching his novel, The Ambidextrist (2002), and is repeatedly
drawn to society’s disenfranchised and marginalized citizens. Rock’s
new novel, The Bewildered, focuses on three outsider pubescent kids, Kayla,
Chris, and Leon. The kids set out to find “bewilderment”—which
translates, for them, to locating something real among all the bullshit. They
run into Natalie, a “bewildered” adult consumed by the obsessive study
of 1970s Playboy Playmates. Natalie hires the three kids to harvest copper wire
from telephone poles in clandestine raids. Soon, it becomes clear that bewilderment
is related, in some way, to electricity. Natalie has had an electrical “accident.”
Soon, Leon does as well.
May 7, 2005 MostlyFiction.com -- A
Review of The Bewildered
The metallic taste of the rain is pleasing to Natalie, which is one of the reasons
she likes to walk in the Portland drizzle. Radio static is now preferable to
music, which grates. Bright lights, "florescent, flickering so fast no
one could tell they weren't steady," provide the ambiance she likes most.
She is pure adrenaline - electric - awake all night. Tang - orange flavored
water really - fruit roll-ups and beef jerky comprise her diet. She can't remember
the last time she ate fresh fruit and vegetables, but likes canned produce,
with the slight aftertaste of metal. Home is a lopsided trailer supported by
sinking cinderblocks, surrounded by clumps of crabgrass, old bottle caps and
scraps of paper, located off a dirt road. Most of all, Natalie is obsessed with
Playboy Playmates from the year 1976. She knows their bios by heart, can mimic
their photographic poses. That Bicentennial year was a memorable one for the
then 12-year-old girl. Now, however, "Forgetfulness disconnected the past
from the future, took her in a different direction, and she suspected that was
not something she could always deny. For the temptation was not to remember,
to really forget, to embrace her best days....moving forward, her energy multiplying,
never lapsing."
April 25, 2005 The Oregonian -- Three
against the (adult) world, Portland-style
Kayla, Chris and Leon, the central characters in Portland writer Peter Rock's
new novel "The Bewildered," are precocious 15-year-olds who skateboard,
commiserate about the shortcomings of adults and attempt to navigate the interdependencies
of their intense threesome.
April 10, 2005 San Francisco Chronicle -- A
fixation electrifying and eerie
Even for a zany, Left Coast city like Portland, Ore., the characters that inhabit
Peter Rock's "The Bewildered" are cut from a rare cloth of eccentricity.
Or make that electricity.
April 2005 Curled up with a good book -- The
Bewildered
In an inspired plot twist, Peter Rock builds an entire novel around a quote:
"They created in a single night a new situation...For the moment their
bewilderment was their only etiquette." (Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who
Fell From Grace with the Sea)
THE AMBIDEXTRIST
January 2002
Context Books
Feb. 28, 2001 Philadelphia Weekly -- City
Writs: Peter Rock puts Philadelphia (and Philadelphia Weekly) in his fiction
A homeless man, a benevolent medical examiner with a penchant for Poe and a
woman who tries to make a connection through the "Anything Goes" ads
in the back of the Philadelphia Weekly--they could be from different worlds,
but in Peter Rock's "Disentangling," their paths intertwine and ultimately
collide.
Jan. 13, 2002 Newsday -- Homeless
Where the Heart Is
IN PETER ROCK'S new novel, the ambidextrist of the title makes his living, such
as it is, by offering his body to science. (With an equally developed left brain
and right, he believes researchers are getting two for the price of one.) He
takes pills and placebos in pharmaceutical studies; he undergoes brain scans
and sleep-deprivation experiments. He lives on the streets amid the wreckage
of the burned-out fringes of Philadelphia and bathes with a sponge in the bathrooms
of restaurants and airport lounges. His name is Scott, and he's desperate in
many ways - desperate, above all, for love.
Jan. 22, 2002 Philadelphia Inquirer -- The Schuylkill flows, and an urban drama runs its course
Jan. 23, 2002 Philadelphia Weekly -- Rock
Solid
For an artist who listens to his heart, anything can be a source of inspiration.
A discarded mattress, a strange drifter in a grubby green coat, a creeping feeling
of being hemmed in by the city and its structures. In Peter Rock's novel, The
Ambidextrist, (out this month from Context Books) these are just a few of the
elements of the story of Scott, an aimless yet oddly purposeful guy who lives
on the streets of Philadelphia and who pieces together a living as a pharmaceutical
test subject.
Jan. 25, 2002 Rocky Mountain News -- Dialogue reads like a Hemingway
Feb. 17, 2002 The Oregonian -- An intersection of
lost souls yearning to connect in Philadelphia
It's exciting to pick up a book by Peter Rock, to read sentences that are natural,
not at all contrived, and yet still wonderfully new and surprising.
March 8, 2002 The Daily Pennsylvanian -- NEW
BOOK DEALS WITH PHILLY HOMELESS
Peter Rock’s latest book, The Ambidextrist, depicts urban life along the
Schuylkill River.
Peter Rock has lived in many places in the United States, but Philadelphia has
obviously left a lasting impression on him. His latest book, The Ambidextrist,
is set on the banks of the Schuylkill River and explores the gritty underworld
of homelessness and desperation in the City of Brotherly Love.
April 3, 2002 Arizona Daily Wildcat -- 'The
Ambidextrist' author uses both coasts
Peter Rock, one of two writers reading for the UA Poetry Center's reading series
tonight, is afraid. But it's not reading in front of an audience he's afraid
of; it's the other person he's reading with.
April 4, 2002 The Stranger -- ROCK'S
HUMANITY Peter Rock Retains Humanity in The Ambidextrist
"I had this vision of myself as the proud new groom," says Portland
author Peter Rock says over coffee. "Freshly married, the new book's just
out and the next one is on the way. And then everything just fell apart."
Dec. 7 2002 Rocky Mountain News -- Fiction
Recommendations
The Ambidextrist, by Peter Rock (Context Books, $21.95). Rock's story revolves
around a homeless young man, who survives by working as a subject in medical
trials, and an older black man he meets. Interwoven is the story of four boys,
also trapped in poverty. Rock describes in gritty detail the basic human need
for respect, acceptance and love.
2002 The Omaha Weekly Reader -- A
Shadow Population
Pete Rock is, for some inexplicable reason, much more of a well-kept literary
secret than he really should be. With his first novel, This Is the Place, Rock
showed an ease and authority as a writer, allowing words and images to walk
a fine line between realism and something almost surreal, offering obsessive,
graced-though-desperate characters.
CARNIVAL WOLVES
August 1998
Anchor Books
Excerpt
October 2, 1998 The Michigan Daily -- Rock
stirs the emotions
A significantly sized dalmatian falls from a bridge a great distance above you,
nearly beaning you on the head in the process, and miraculously it lives. You:
a) ponder the possibility that you were only two feet away from becoming puppy
chow, b) remind yourself to invest in some good life insurance, or c) consider
the occurrence a sign from higher forces. Thus, demonstrating the lack of fruitful
personal relationships in your life and urging you to strike out on the road
in search of your true self. If you are Alan Johnson, the main character of
Peter Rock's newest novel "Carnival Wolves," the car is already packed
for the journey and to top it off, you have stolen the recuperating dog from
his original owner to serve as spiritual mascot for the voyage.
September 9, 1998 The Baltimore City Paper -- Review
of Carnival Wolves
Peter Rock's second novel, a collection of interrelated short stories linked
by Johnson's travels, might best be understood as a hybrid about hybrids. Part
episodic travel narrative, part character study, Rock's vision of America is
chock-full of people whose lives (and occasionally bodies) are so damaged and
empty that they can only create things as broken as they are.
THIS IS THE PLACE
March 1997
Anchor Books
Excerpt
author
notebook
June 9, 1997 Association for Mormon Letters -- Review
July 28, 1997 Tuscon Weekly -- Right place, wrong time