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Peter Rock

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Peter Rock

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Born
in Salt Lake City, Utah, The United States
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Member Since
March 2007


Peter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City. His most recent novel, Passersthrough, involves a murder house, a fax machine, communications between the living and the dead, and a mountain lake that moves from place to place. He is also the author of the novels The Night Swimmers, SPELLS, Klickitat, The Shelter Cycle, My Abandonment, The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, Carnival Wolves and This Is the Place, as well as a story collection, The Unsettling. Rock attended Deep Springs College, received a BA in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He has taught fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Deep Springs College, and in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. His ...more

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Peter Rock I found myself in a very uncanny moment, and I reacted to it.

This is actually a scene that is accounted for in the novel: Five or six years ago in Wi…more
I found myself in a very uncanny moment, and I reacted to it.

This is actually a scene that is accounted for in the novel: Five or six years ago in Wisconsin, I was looking for something, both daughters in tow, and we went into the Red Cabin, an old 10 x 15 foot shack where I used to sleep. Once inside, I found myself surrounded by the artifacts of my life, twenty years before. An old bicycle, pieces of windsurfers, a Montana license plate from a favorite truck, but especially remnants of my attempts to be a writer. The old desk where I tried to write stories and, on the walls, personal but discouraging rejections from C. Michael Curtis at The Atlantic and Lois Rosenthal at Story, quotations from Camus (“It is only in order to shine sooner that that the author refuses to rewrite. Despicable. Begin again.”) and Hemingway, a photocopy of a picture of a handless blind boy reading Braille with his lips.

It was a pathetic tableau, an atmosphere of self-serious loneliness still lingering. I was fascinated and embarrassed at the same time. Also bewildered. I mean, there was no good evidence in those artifacts that my pursuits were anything but pretentious and delusional, that they might lead anywhere. And yet here I was, all this time later, having published books, being a kind of professor and—more surprisingly—having a family, these excellent daughters. It was uncomfortable to feel connected to that person, difficult to understand there being a continuity between him and me. I was standing there just staring at these pieces of my past in disbelief while my girls were shouting impatiently at me to do what they wanted me to do.

In my writing, I’ve come to understand “inspiration” as a reaction to something outside of me, something that I don’t understand but that fascinates me. (I tell my students, “If there’s something that you don’t know much about but that seems to be calling you, it’s because there’s something inside of you that is resonating with it—it’s your job to explore this connection.”) This goes back to my days as a museum security guard, where I passed time trying to make up stories for all the art works in my care. And then reacting, in books I’ve written, to a newspaper story of a father and daughter living in the wilderness, or the history and beliefs of an apocalyptic church in Montana.

This time the mysteries I was reacting to were once inside me, very close to me. So the questions of “What happened?” and “Why?” and “What was wrong with me?” all rose up. And I decided to look into that time, and the pieces of it that were available to me, and to see what possibilities would present themselves, and what I would do.

Because really the goal in all of this is to have something come out of me—in words—that I don’t expect, that surprises me.

I try not to start out with ideas or intentions.
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Average rating: 3.48 · 10,879 ratings · 1,863 reviews · 28 distinct worksSimilar authors
My Abandonment

3.57 avg rating — 8,160 ratings — published 2009 — 35 editions
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Klickitat

3.11 avg rating — 725 ratings — published 2016 — 10 editions
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The Night Swimmers

3.36 avg rating — 622 ratings — published 2019 — 8 editions
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The Shelter Cycle

3.04 avg rating — 485 ratings — published 2013 — 14 editions
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Passersthrough

3.03 avg rating — 429 ratings11 editions
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The Bewildered

3.34 avg rating — 103 ratings — published 2005 — 6 editions
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The Unsettling

3.70 avg rating — 74 ratings — published 2006 — 7 editions
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This Is the Place

3.41 avg rating — 69 ratings — published 1997 — 5 editions
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The Ambidextrist: A Novel

3.28 avg rating — 60 ratings — published 2002 — 6 editions
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Carnival Wolves

3.78 avg rating — 49 ratings — published 1998
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More books by Peter Rock…

More about Diane Williams

Friends! A brief respite from my half-assed self-promotion; when I was writing a review of VICKY SWANKY IS A BEAUTY by Diane Williams, I remembered this tiny essay I wrote about a sentence of hers that has long bedeviled me:

http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/9325/the... Read more of this blog post »
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Published on June 05, 2013 19:57

Peter’s Recent Updates

Peter Rock rated a book it was amazing
Return by Roberto Bolaño
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Much to marvel at, here. Worth the price of admission for "William Burns" (one of my all-time favorites) and the title story.

"What happened next is hazy. And it's hazy because panic is contagious."

"From that moment on, everything in my new supernatur
...more
Peter Rock rated a book it was amazing
On the Calculation of Volume II by Solvej Balle
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"I try to conceal it, but I know. I am a monster and I devour my world. There is no getting away from it. I eat leftovers . . . "

"I think I began to feel at home even before she had reached her car. I have grown used to these lightning strikes. I hav
...more
Peter Rock has read
Posthumous Stories by Roberto Bolaño
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"But things have happened in the meantime."

Fragmentary, uneven, fascinating, and how do I feel about publishing the short works found on Roberto's computer after his death?
...more
Posthumous Stories by Roberto Bolaño
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Peter Rock has read
Posthumous Stories by Roberto Bolaño
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"But things have happened in the meantime."

Fragmentary, uneven, fascinating, and how do I feel about publishing the short works found on Roberto's computer after his death?
...more
Peter Rock rated a book it was amazing
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
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I guess I read this 34 years ago? So I was curious for various secret reasons and read it again. Well, Michael O, you really brought it, here. So rich and romantic; kind of makes most of what I'm reading these days feel a little cynical and diluted.

x
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Peter Rock rated a book it was amazing
Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt
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'Sorry I've been a bit . . . terrible of late.'
"Yes. Yes you have,' she said. 'But I forgive you.'
'Thanks. That is very handsome.'
I had a powerful feeling suddenly that I wanted to buy her an enormous present. Something really astounding like, I don'
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Peter Rock rated a book it was amazing
Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
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Lord. Sharpness.

"A good deal of Alexander's life had been assigned to women. Much of his time had gone into lovemaking. Tonight, October, is our second meeting after a number of years. The last time, a month ago, he had told me that for a long period
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Peter Rock rated a book it was amazing
On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle
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What next? Reminds me a little of “Funes the Memorious” at “times.”

“I have got used to this thought.”

“And there may be healing in sentences.”
Peter Rock rated a book it was amazing
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
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Been a while since I read this so I read it again because film? It's like if Denis Johnson wrote Cormac McCarthy, kind of.

"Before his mind could say 'these are wolves come into my yard,' they were gone. All but one. And she was the wolf girl."
...more
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Quotes by Peter Rock  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“It is important to always remember that at any time you think of it there are people being kept in buildings when they want to go outside.”
Peter Rock, My Abandonment

“Every problem I have comes from believing something to be true that is not true.”
Peter Rock, My Abandonment

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. He will pass an invisible boundary. Don't forget this. Don't forget that thinking can get in the way. Forget the forgetting. We seek to forget ourselves, to be surprised and to do something without knowing how or why. The way of life is wonderful. It is by abandonment.”
Peter Rock, My Abandonment

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message 1: by Carla

Carla Golian Thanks for the friendship :)


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