Friday Tyrant - Give Lish A Chance

Something big, a big book, is in the works. You ever heard of Gordon Lish? If you have, odds are you're thinking about that tiff he had with Raymond Carver that's been going on for ages and that is now officially dead even though people keep talking about it. Or you know him as a teacher. There's controversy surrounding this as well. All kinds of lore about his secret methods and the long (7- to 12-hour) teaching sessions he puts his students through. You may notice that the ones who talk most of the shit about him as a teacher are the ones who have never had him as a teacher. The secrecy pretty much boils down to this: Gordon thinks that his students, since they are paying students, deserve to have certain information that isn't available to others, seeing as how they paid and the others didn't. That totally makes sense to me. What's your problem, Mr. Weird Person Who Bitches About This Constantly? His classes have churned out many, and I mean many, of today's best writers, and they have also made certain writers stop writing completely.

It appears that both of these groups of people learned something from Gordon, nay? The controversy surrounding his life as an editor and his life as a teacher has been blown so far out of proportion that his own writing has, unfortunately, been overlooked. Don't get me wrong, real readers know all about it, and all about him. He just never broke in the way that many people wrongly connect with the word success. Gordon's writing has made him successful in another way. I think his books are going to last because of how impenetrable some of it is. And people, as a whole, like a good puzzle. They'll keep it around until they figure it the hell out. Lish's written twenty books that we know of (it's said that he's nom de plumed a lot more) and is known for being the best writing teacher. Ever. His career as an editor is unbelievable. He's got a collection coming out that just might turn out to be the biggest book of our time. This could very well be our definer.

O/R, a new publishing venture founded by John Oakes and Colin Robinson, is releasing a book of Lish's best work titled Collected Fictions. This mother of a book is 546 pages and can only be ordered from the O/R website. No Amazon, no stores. It's a pretty ballsy move by these guys which I hope works out for them and Gordon. It doesn't come out until April 30th, but you can pre-order. It is something to have.

Here's a little promo video Lish made for the book: