What May Have Been is a novel in letters exchanged between the artist Jackson Pollock and his fictional lover, a young woman called Dori G. Susan Tepper and Gary Percesepe have created a sexy and luminous love story that takes place sometime during the late 1940's, in that sandy wonderland at the eastern tip of Long Island known as The Hamptons. Advance Praise for What May Have Been "In this extraordinary novel, Pollock tells his lover that things like paint and wives are very small in the scheme of things. Gary Percesepe and Susan Tepper show how the great scheme of things is, in fact, in literary art, captured in paint and wives and a Montauk surf and a silky scarf and narrow hips and a cold water flat and a used Ford. Brilliantly conceived, brilliantly executed, this is a stunning book about art and about life." -Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain "The fictional letters between Pollock and an imaginary Dori G come out in a hailstorm of paint flecks, lockets, long looks, kisses, blowing sand. Dori sees Jackson in his distance and his nearing, and his return to her like the visit of one of the Greek gods to his mortal lover, as piercing and as fatal." -Mary Grimm, author of Left to Themselves and Stealing Time "How to convey the irresistible pleasures of this novel in letters? The language mimics the slashing, dramatic immediate heroic gestures of abstract expressionism, is an extraordinary act of poetic invention, and tells a sexy and doomed love story." -James Robison, author of The Illustrator and Rumors "These two fervent voices exude the splendor and gloom of adulterous love." -Mark Wisniewski, author of Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman
Susan Tepper is the author of Deer & Other Stories and the poetry collection Blue Edge. Over one hundred of her stories, poems, essays and interviews have been published in journals and anthologies worldwide. Prior to taking up the writing life, Tepper was an actor, singer, flight attendant, marketing manager, television producer, interior decorator, rescue worker and a few other things. Where You Can Find It, her newly completed novel, is up for grabs. If she were around during Jackson Pollock s time, she believes she would have been one of his girlfriends.
Gary Percesepe is Associate Editor at the Mississippi Review and serves on the Board of Advisors at Fictionaut. His short stories, poems, essays, book reviews, interviews, literary and film criticism, and articles in philosophy and religion have been published in Mississippi Review, Salon, Antioch Review, Westchester Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Stymie Magazine, New Ohio Review, Pank, Luna Park, Corium, Istanbul Literary Review, elimae, Wigleaf, Metazen, and other places. A former philosophy professor, he is the author of four books in philosophy, including Future(s) of Philosophy: The Marginal Thinking of Jacques Derrida. He just completed a novel called Leaving Telluride.
