by Gordon Lish
I mean, look you, if it’s all the same to you and to any finical family members of yours, and, no less surely, to your various and sundry religious leaders, how about it for once in your life you just go ahead and quit it with all of the buttons and bows and confine yourself to say, only to say, to venture (capitulate) to the saying of nought but—that’s right, that’s it, good going, great going!—PLEASE?
Or, better still, PLEASE!
Ness prawn?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE AUTHOR, in deep gratitude, salutes the editors and publishers of the periodicals where certain of the foregoing pieces originally appeared and, in the instance of Harper’s Magazine, were also reprinted after their first having been presented elsewhere. His delighted thanks, then, to the good hearts at Harper’s Magazine, Salmagundi, The Antioch Review, and The New York Tyrant.
GORDON LISH, born in 1934 in Hewlett, New York, is the author of numerous works of fiction, which together with his activities as a teacher and editor have placed him at the forefront of the American literary scene. Fiction editor at Esquire magazine from 1969 to 1976, in 1977 he became an editor at Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, where he worked until 1995. Among the writers he is credited with championing are Harold Brodkey, Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo, Barry Hannah, Jack Gilbert, Amy Hempel, Jason Schwartz, Noy Holland, Sam Lipsyte, Anne Carson, Ben Marcus, Gary Lutz, Cynthia Ozick, Christine Schutt, Dawn Raffel, and Will Eno. From 1987 to 1995, Lish was the publisher and editor of The Quarterly, a literary journal that showcased the work of contemporary writers. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984), and in the same year won the O. Henry Award for his story “For Jeromé—with Love and Kisses,” a parody of J. D. Salinger’s story “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor.” Among his seven novels are Dear Mr. Capote (1983) and Peru (1986). He lives in New York City.
Collected Fictions
Gordon Lish
This definitive collection of Lish’s short work includes a foreword by the author and 106 stories, many of which Lish has revised exclusively for this edition. His observations are in turn achingly sad and wryly funny as they spark recognition of our common, clumsy humanity. There are no heroes here, except, perhaps, for all of us, as we muddle our way through life: they are stories of unfaithful husbands, inadequate fathers, restless children and writing teachers, men lost in their middle age: more often than not first-person tales narrated by one “Gordon Lish.” The take on life is bemused, satirical, and relentlessly accurate; the language unadorned: the result is a model of modernist prose and a volume of enduring literary craftsmanship.
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