Gordon Lish: 4 books

In literary America to utter the name Gordon Lish in a conversation is like adding hot sauce to a meal. You either enjoy the zesty experience one that pushes your limits or you prefer to stay away. Its Lish who first as fiction editor at Esquire magazine (where he earned the nickname Captain Fiction)...

Goings: In Thirteen Sittings is Gordon Lish’s first completely original work in sixteen years, thirteen stories that mark the ongoing vitality of one of the era’s enduring scribes.Widely acknowledged as one of the most influential editors of our era, Gordon Lish has quite simply changed...

Arguably Gordon Lish's masterpiece, Peru begins with its narrator announcing, "There is nothing which I will not tell you if I can think of it." Gradually, the story of a dark childhood secret—real or imagined—unfolds: in 1940, six-year-old Gordon murdered his harelipped rival, Steven Adinoff, in...

A list. What could be more basic than a list? And a list by Lish is sure to intrigue. In this, Lish’s latest work, he delivers a characteristic exhibition of his peculiar deformities of candor, obsession, and wit, via two extended “notes” to the reader, including a pages-long list of essential...