Gordon Lish

In a 2003 interview with The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Diane Williams said, “I studied with Gordon for two semesters in New York because I understood what he was offering—the special chance to become hugely conscious of how language can be manipulated to produce maximum effects. So often, in our naturally powerful speech, we only understand dimly how we are doing it, so that we are deprived of the good fortune of being in charge of it, rather than the other way around.”

In August 1998, three years after Carol Polsgrove described Lish's heavy editing of Raymond Carver's Neighbors and published a facsimile page showing the editing, The New York Times Magazine published an article by D. T. Max about the extent of Lish's editing of Carver's short stories which was visible in manuscripts held at the Lilly Library. Before his death, Carver had written to Lish: “If I have any standing or reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you.” In December 2007, The New Yorker published an earlier and much longer draft of Carver's story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" under Carver's title, "Beginners." The magazine published Lish's extensive edits of the story on its web site for comparison. In May 2010 Giles Harvey wrote an article in the New York Review of Books reviewing Carver's work, and made the observation, "The publication of 'Beginners' has not done Carver any favors. Rather, it has inadvertently pointed up the editorial genius of Gordon Lish." Conversely, Stephen King in The New York Times described Lish's influence as 'baleful' and heartless, singling out the story 'The Bath' as 'a total re-write' and 'a cheat'. In 2013, David Winters wrote a profile of Lish for The Guardian, arguing that the widely publicized association with Carver had distorted Lish's reception, drawing attention away from the formal and stylistic innovation of his own fiction and from the achievements of his students.

Lish retired from teaching fiction writing in 1997 but came out of retirement to teach during the summers of 2009 and 2010 at the Center for Fiction in Manhattan. He also gave a series of lectures at Columbia University in 2013 and 2014.

He received an honorary doctor of letters from the State University of New York at Oneonta in 1994.

Lish continued to write fiction, including Mourner at the Door in 1988, Extravaganza in 1989, My Romance in 1991, and Zimzum in 1993. For the June 1991 issue of Vanity Fair, James Wolcott wrote a profile on Gordon Lish and Don DeLillo called "The Sunshine Boys."

In 1987, Lish founded and edited the avant garde literary magazine, The Quarterly, which showcased the works of contemporary authors. Six volumes were published by the summer of 1988. The Quarterly introduced such authors as J. E. Pitts, Jason Schwartz, Jane Smiley, Mark Richard, Bruce Holland Rogers, and Jennifer Allen. By the time The Quarterly ended in 1995, it had published 31 volumes.

He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984.

After leaving Yale in 1980, Lish continued teaching creative writing as an adjunct professor at Columbia University and New York University, inspiring writers such as Amy Hempel; Hempel would later dedicate her collection Reasons to Live to him. Gary Lutz also dedicated Stories in the Worst Way (first published in 1996 by Alfred A. Knopf) and I Looked Alive (first published in 2003 by Four Walls Eight Windows) to Gordon Lish. Experimental minimalist V.O. Blum is indebted to Lish for having lauded an early novelette "Sperm Boy" in 1994; Blum went on to win kudos for a later novella, DownMind.

In February 1977, Esquire published "For Rupert – with no promises" as an unsigned work of fiction: this was the first time it had published a work without identifying the author. Readers speculated that it was the work of J. D. Salinger, but it was in fact a clever parody by Lish, who is quoted as saying, "I tried to borrow Salinger's voice and the psychological circumstances of his life, as I imagine them to be now. And I tried to use those things to elaborate on certain circumstances and events in his fiction to deepen them and add complexity."

Lish left Esquire in 1977 as senior editor to take a position with the publishing firm of Alfred A. Knopf; he retained the same title and remained there until 1995. At Knopf, he continued to champion new fiction, publishing works by Ozick, Carver, Hannah, Anderson Ferrell, David Leavitt, Amy Hempel, Noy Holland, Lynne Tillman, Will Ferguson, Harold Brodkey, and Joy Williams. After Lish retired from both teaching and publishing, some of his students continued to make noted contributions to American letters; the National Book Award was won in 2004 by Lily Tuck for The News from Paraguay, a novel. In the same year Christine Schutt's Florida was a finalist, and Dana Spiotta was a finalist for the award in 2006 for Eat The Document. Other former students whose writing has met with praise include Diane Williams, Dawn Raffel, William Tester, Victoria Redel, Gary Lutz, Ben Marcus, Sam Lipsyte, Will Eno, and Bahamian writer Garth Buckner, whose The Origins of Solitude was met with some critical acclaim.

It was at Esquire that Lish's aggressive editing of Carver's "Neighbors" in 1971 created the minimalist effect for which he was later known, as Carol Polsgrove pointed out in her 1995 book, It Wasn't Pretty, Folks, But Didn't We Have Fun? Esquire in the Sixties. Polsgrove wrote, "On several pages of the twelve-page manuscript, fewer than half of Carver's words were left standing. Close to half were cut on several other pages." While Carver accepted Lish's editorial changes, other writers (including close friends such as DeLillo, who pulled a planned excerpt from the forthcoming Great Jones Street in September 1972 because of Lish's expurgations) resisted. Wrote Paul Bowles, "I fail completely to understand the meaning of the suggestions, or of the story as it incorporates them."

Despite his comparative obscurity, Lish relocated to New York City in late 1969 after being hired as fiction editor at Esquire on the basis of a provocative cover letter and the promise to publisher Arnold Gingrich that he would deliver "the new fiction"; he would hold this position until 1977. Here he became known as "Captain Fiction" for the number of authors whose careers he assisted, including Carver, Richard Ford, Cynthia Ozick, Don DeLillo, Reynolds Price, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Raymond Kennedy, Alexander Theroux, and Barry Hannah. With the exception of Ozick and DeLillo, all of these writers taught and/or studied in academic creative writing programs, reflecting a totemic shift in the institutionalization of American literature. Throughout this period, Lish taught creative writing at Yale University as a lecturer and guest fellow.

The outré nature of Genesis West incensed school board officials, and Lish was denied tenure in 1963; two fellow teachers left in protest, and the kerfuffle was covered by The Nation. After refusing a fellowship at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a teaching position at Deep Springs College, Lish became editor-in-chief and director of linguistic studies at Behavioral Research Laboratories in Menlo Park, California. There, in 1964, he produced English Grammar, a text for educators; Why Work, a book of interviews; New Sounds in American Fiction, a set of recorded dramatic readings of short stories; and A Man's Work, an information motivation sound system in vocational guidance. It consisted of over 50 translucent albums.

Genesis West was published in seven volumes by The Chrysalis West Foundation between 1961 and 1965. While working on Genesis West, their house and magazine became a focus point, and celebrated such authors as Neal Cassady, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Gilbert, and Herbert Gold. Although Lish is not ranked among the Merry Pranksters, he often hosted Kesey and Cassady in his home. Neal Cassady makes note of his time spent at the Lish home on page 151 of his only self-authored book, The First Third. Carolyn Cassady makes note of the Lish home in Off the Road.

Following Lish's graduation, the family moved to San Francisco. During this period, Lish experienced the last vestiges of the San Francisco Renaissance and completed a teaching credential at San Francisco State University in 1960. Following another move to Burlingame, California, he took a position as an English teacher at Mills High School in Millbrae, California, where he joined a new Pacific Coast avant-garde literary journal, Chrysalis Review, edited by the San Francisco writer, John Herrmann. When Herrmann left the magazine, Lish took it over, and eventually it evolved into Genesis West.

After Frances advised him to attend college, Lish matriculated at the nearby University of Arizona. He majored in English and German and clashed with creative writing instructor Edward Loomis, an adherent of the New Criticism who routinely disparaged Lish's more idiosyncratic influences, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac. Nevertheless, Lish completed a cum laude degree in two years, graduating in 1959.

Lish was raised in Hewlett, New York, on Long Island; his father was the founder and primary partner in Lish Brothers, a millinery firm. During his formative years, he suffered from extreme psoriasis and was often ostracized by his peers. He attended Phillips Academy but left without graduating following an altercation with an antisemitic classmate in 1952. While briefly institutionalized in Westchester County, New York, following an adverse reaction to the hormone ACTH (used in psoriasis treatment), he developed a friendship with noted poet Hayden Carruth. Following his release, he took a job as a radio broadcaster for WEIL in New Haven, Connecticut, under the pseudonym of Gordo Lockwood and continued to correspond with Carruth, who introduced Lish to the Partisan Review. He relocated to Tucson, Arizona, due to the ameliorative effects of the region's climate on his psoriasis. In November 1956, Lish married Loretta Frances Fokes; they would go on to have three children (Jennifer, Becca and Ethan).

He was named one of the 200 major writers of our time by the French periodical Le Nouvel Observateur. Lish has placed his papers and manuscripts, some 80,000 items dating from 1951 to 2012, at the Lilly Library of Indiana University.

Gordon Lish (born February 11, 1934 in Hewlett, New York) is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford. He is the father of the novelist Atticus Lish.