Visions and Revisions: Coming of Age in the Age of AIDS

Novelist and critic Dale Peck’s latest work—part memoir, part extended essay—is a foray into what the author calls “the second half of the first half of the AIDS epidemic,” i.e., the period between 1987, when the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded, and 1996, when the advent of combination therapy transformed AIDS from a virtual death sentence into a chronic manageable illness.

Reminiscent of Joan Didion’s The White Album and Kurt Vonnegut’s Palm Sunday, <…