The Life and Times of Peter Straub Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on March 2, 1943. His father was a salesman while his mother was a nurse. They both had ideas for their son, Peter, as for what they wanted him to become. All Straub wanted to do though, at the age of 5, was learn to read. Kindergarten was a bore for Peter; cutting shapes out of construction paper was not what he wanted to do. He decided to teach himself to read by memorizing his comic books and reciting them over and over to neighborhood kids until he could recognize the words he was using.1 In the first grade, Mr. Str