Peter Dube – författare

"e;The titles of each of these linked stories, named for Greek mythic figures, where characters reappear and disappear, give the reader a clue to the subject matter, providing a kind of archetypal key and structure. And though plot is not in the forefront, each story is an adventure in the sense that each challenges its characters in often profound subconscious or primitive ways."e; – Trebor Healy, author of Faun and Through It Came Bright Colors, from his introduction to the anniversary editionThe stories in Peter Dubé's collection, At the Bottom of the Sky, unspool surreal, gothic-tinged post-modern reveries, populated by obsessive, vividly drawn figures whose inner lives radiate a restless, poetic intensity. Resolutely queer, these urban, interlocked nocturnal journeys blur into literary marvels both enigmatic and luminous."e;There is more art in a single line of Mr. Dubé's work than in all the combined efforts of the authors represented on the current Times' list."e; – Ashé Journal

"e;Hovering World is surrealist in its every nerve. At the heart of the book is the idea of a city with limitless physical and metaphysical terrain."e;– Daniel Allen Cox, author of several novels and I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah's Witness, from his introduction to the anniversary edition"e;Peter Dubé's debut novel follows the life of an intensely lonely man named Julian, who watches the flashing TV and wonders if "e;somebody else is looking at these same pictures and … finding the same messages."e; Rather than gaze quixotically at the moon and wonder if someone is out there, Julian looks to the tube for hope. Julian's alienation is only accentuated by the fact that he is almost perpetually surrounded by friends. Peter Dubé creates a fine tension between Julian's complex inner monologue and the mostly shallow transactions within his social sphere. While the conversations are generally mundane, the reader must run to catch up with Julian's thoughts, which rattle around his mind like a marble in a maze. The book takes a day-in-the-life form: on this particular day a photograph of an angel is mysteriously delivered to Julian. From here, the reader follows Julian's quest to resolve this mystery, and his obsession grows the pulse of the book also quickens. In the final quarter of Hovering World readers find themselves whirling from frantic dance floors to the steamy corridors of a gay sauna. Dubé takes us effortlessly through these layers of space, but what is most poignant is the fact that Julian feels at home in none of the many haunts he frequents."e; – Montreal Review of Books

The book-length prose poem The Headless Man takes up Georges Bataille's subversive image of the acéphale and turns him into an outsider "everyman" to explore the paradoxes of identity, the body, and desire. This oddly fractured tale centres the monster, both human and inhuman, recognizable yet strange, in a labyrinth of experience. The Headless Man awakens in a place that, although based on our own world, is unfamiliar to him. Moving through this strange landscape, he must make sense of it through his actions, striving to determine whether there is a place for him in a world not made in his image, or whether he must imagine something different in order to be. Having no head, he cannot speak, see, or hear in the usual ways, so he must learn to do these things using other parts of his body-which leads him to a fuller sense of himself. In this gothic, picaresque narrative, laced with horror and humour, Montreal surrealist Peter Dubé addresses his concern with queer challenges to identity and sexual boundaries, exploring questions about insider and outsider, what constitutes the "normal," and what is relegated to the realm of the "monstrous."