I would like to say right off the bat, that I was never a fan of poetry. With the exception of John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” and Alfred Noyes’ “The Highwayman,” poetry was something I had to endure as part of English class throughout my years in high school.
And somehow, I managed to avoid any poetry book, whether a collection or an anthology, like the plague, whether it was written by e.e. cummings, Leonard Cohen, Rod McKuen, or Amanda Gorman. To put it succinctly, poetry was never my literary cup of tea.
Then I started to read Bonnie Garmus’ new novel Peck & Peck, the follow-up to her runaway best-selling debut novel Lessons in Chemistry. When I finished reading this wonderful serio-comic novel, I gained a whole new respect for the poetry genre.
The time is 1982. The setting is New York City, the world’s publishing capital. Batter Gray is an aspiring poet in his early 20s who wants to make poetry his career, but painfully realizes that this path isn’t well-paying (if it pays at all). So Batter ends up working a number of “joe jobs”, such as a waiter at an eatery located near his apartment called Just Okay, and as an associate (and shirt folder) at a branch of The Gap. No matter what he goes through in his young life, Batter remains firm that poetry is his calling.
Then, through sheer luck, Batter gets hired for a job at the offices of Peck & Peck, a prestigious quarterly magazine that, for many decades, has quietly dedicated itself to publishing and showcasing the finest in contemporary written poetry. To the staff of Peck & Peck, they take poetry very seriously and treat each issue as if it’s a work of art.
This is THE dream job for Batter. He believes that with his experience and knowledge of poetry, he would be getting a position as one of the 39 members of the magazine’s editorial staff. However, much to his surprise (and disappointment), Batter’s new job is as the person in charge of the Copy Center, which is located in the bowels of the building (referred to as the “bomb shelter”). His responsibility is to fulfill the copy requests from those 39 editors, which are sent to him by a network of pneumatic tubes that all lead to his subterranean workspace.
As a result of mistakingly sending an introductory memo to all the personnel at the magazine, and some extra curricular background research done at the New York Public Library, Batter discovers what kind of eccentric, low profile and dysfunctional publishing venture that truly defines Peck & Peck.
Reading about the quirks and oddities that rule Peck & Peck makes it look like the literary equivalent of Dunder Mifflin from The Office. For example, there is a security guard posted at the main entrance in order to discourage aspiring and wannabe poets from submitting their works in person; any submission that is written all in lower case letters, or mention such subjects as kittens, puppies, cooking or sand castles get automatically tossed out; any submissions that are written on parchment paper will not be accepted; and all submissions must be sent by mail, unfolded, in a 9-by 12-inch manilla envelope with a brief notarized cover letter that states the writer didn’t plagiarize his/her material; and all decisions are sent to the poets in question on a postcard that states either “YES” or “NO” in Bauhaus Extra Black Bold type.
Oh, yes, and by the way, no poem — published or unpublished — was allowed to leave the confines of the Peck & Peck building under any circumstances. Any employee who was caught committing this infraction was subject to immediate dismissal.
And to top things off, Peck & Peck is run by Salton Peck, a short-tempered, mercurial individual who saved the magazine from financial ruin. He runs the day to day operations with the subtlety of a deranged Marine Corps drill instructor, expects his employees to cater to his every whim, no matter how ridiculous or unrealistic they are, and doesn’t care about poetry in general, only if it’s making money in order to ensure its continued survival.
This is the world that Batter enters as he tries to make his way in the mad world of Peck & Peck, as he fulfills the countless copy requests from its stable of 39 editors. While this is happening, he has to endure the jealousy, suspicion, and mistrust of those editors, as well as the sarcastic slings and arrows from Dexter York, Salton Peck’s snarky, brown-nosing executive assistant.
Then Batter unwittingly gets involved in Peck family matters when he gets surprise visits to the copy center by Declonius, Salton’s twin brother, who was the creative conscience of Peck & Peck, but was ousted by Salton in a family power play and was forbidden to enter the office again thanks to a court-ordered restraining order. Batter finds a fellow poetry lover in Declonius, as well as a rather offbeat mentor and guiding force regarding obtaining success in the world of published poetry.
All the power plays, pressures, stress, egos, backstabbing and false accusations that go on within the walls of Peck & Peck could make the reader believe that all of this inspired madness could go off madly in all directions with no resolution whatsoever. But leave it to the sharp storytelling skills of Ms. Garmus, who takes a single event as a “phone book party” at the Peck & Peck building — which Salton leaves to Batter to organize — and turns it into a defining moment that brings the loose strands of plots and subplots woven together to produce a satisfying conclusion for practically everyone involved in this crazy salad.
California-born and bred, Ms. Garmus also gets kudos for bringing a deep sense of pathos and drama when two tragic aspects of Batter’s life are revealed by his parents: why he was named after his mother’s pet dog, and the day Batter was born, in which his twin brother died during childbirth. It is probably the most heartbreaking part of the book, but it gives the story a very humane side to it from all the absurdity that envelopes Batter.
Peck & Peck is an achingly funny whirlwind of a novel that lifts the lid off the world of New York-based magazine publishing … stanza by stanza. It not only shines the light on poetry as an unsung hero of a literary genre, it can be dangerous too if you’re not careful.
Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus (Scribner, $38)
