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L  a  s  h  e  d   b  y   l  i  s  h

A former student of "Captain Fiction" emerges unscathed from the legendary fiction editor's writing workshop.

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BY DAVID BOWMAN

On Aug. 9, the New York Times Magazine published an article by D.T. Max about claims that the late Raymond Carver's early short stories were more or less ghost-written by his editor, Gordon Lish. Whether or not Lish played Svengali (or Rasputin) to Carver, the white-haired former Knopf editor was portrayed as a ghost. I want to admit that I know this ghost. I know that 20 years ago Lish's situation was different. Lish was a strong man. Lish was the fiction editor at Esquire. Then Lish was an editor at Knopf. His stable of writers was mighty and seemed even mightier at the time: Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Cynthia Ozick, Harold Brodkey, Joy Williams, Amy Hempel. Lish was a self-proclaimed "Captain Fiction."

Now the 1980s were a cartoon, if you remember. It was the decade of Ronald Reagan vs. the Evil Empire. It was the decade of Mr. T and professional wrestling. It was the decade of Captain Fiction. The '80s was Reagan's and Mr. T's and Gordon Lish's decade.

Though Lish's press had soured even before the decade was over, he still had power. Anyway, it's good for powerful men to have enemies. In Lish's case, his main detractors were former students of his notorious writing workshops, who published exposés of their experiences with the Captain. The main trope about Lish's workshop -- held in the apartments of rich women -- was his practice of letting students read their stories out loud. If he didn't like the first sentence, he would stop the reader and deride her or him in public. "Stop," Lish told GQ writer Neal Karlen, who took the class and then reported on it in the late '80s. "Karlen, I don't feel like I need to know this to keep on living."

As the weeks went by, Karlen -- who was working on his first novel -- never managed to read more than a sentence. He condemned the workshop in the pages of GQ. I myself had an opportunity to read a sentence for Gordon Lish in 1991. I'd read about him for years and he sounded like a jerk. But he was Knopf's jerk. And when I sent a query letter to him asking him to read the manuscript of my first novel, he wrote me a two-word note: "Send it."

Now he became my beloved jerk.

I mailed it off, waited two weeks, then sent Lish a tape recording of a five-minute monologue on why he and Knopf should publish my book. The day after I sent it, I got my manuscript back. A week later, Lish sent a note saying he was impressed with my tape. He said he could make something of me. He also sent a flyer that said he'd be teaching a workshop in Bloomington, Ind.

Now, at that time I didn't think I needed to take any damn workshop. But when you're an unpublished novelist, it doesn't matter what you do for a living -- you feel invalid to the depth of your being. Why not try anything? Lish's Indiana workshop seemed like a good deal. For $600, I'd get the equivalent of four months and $2,500 worth of Lish-estics in two weeks. Besides, when would I ever have a reason to go to Bloomington again? I went.

I didn't know the class was held in Bloomington so Lish could oversee the transference of his papers to the University of Indiana's Lilly Library. I just took a room in a motel and went to the Lish class five days a week for two weeks. This is what I wrote in my journal: "The Lish Workshop meets in a small living room lined with Turkish rugs and walled with bookshelves with long windows. Cardinals constantly flirt through the trees. There are 16 people here. The men are mostly in their 30s-thru-50s. Many wear shorts every day. The women are in their 40s. Many are angry women. These angry women have tight small chins and the same blunt pageboy. Many are angry every day."

Each class consisted (and still consists, I assume) of Lish's talking nonstop for not less than three hours. Students did not get to ask questions. Lish ended the first day by saying: "I warn you. Don't try to finger me. I was in the bughouse twice and in jail once. I resent anyone who would use criticism to get even with someone. I warn you. Don't use anything I say to try to get me after the fact."

He also made pronouncements such as: "Never be sincere -- sincerity is the death of writing." And: "Beat the tap against death by writing -- write around the clock."

I got to read my first sentence during the fourth hour of the second class. It went: "Dad hula hooped real good for the jury." I looked up. Lish nodded. Oh boy! I would get to read my second sentence. I read: "As he spun, our judge yawned, showing us her fillings."

Lish stopped me. "You used an adverbial participle. Never use adverbial participles."

Shit! I had rewritten the second sentence five minutes before I read it. Originally it read: "Dad hula hooped real good for the jury. Our judge yawned, showing us her fillings."

Two days later, I got to read again. There were certainly no adverbial participles in my text. And I made it through the entire paragraph. The first sentence was: "My wife made you look at the postcard after we shot you."

The last day of the workshop I got through a whole page that began, "Our father is so scared by my wife and so scared by me that your father makes the body of Christ appear on our wall."

I tell all you good women and men that I left Bloomington a fan of Lish, but immune to his cult. He seemed a King Lear -- brilliant but out of his mind. "I've been in the bughouse," he kept telling us. He first told that to Vanity Fair in 1988. He told that to the New York Times Magazine two weeks ago. I've researched the matter and found that Lish was involved in an experimental medical program where he was apparently injected with a secretion from the pituitary gland of a hog. He went through this because he suffers from severe psoriasis -- an affliction that restricts him to wearing khaki clothing, the only kind of garments he can bear to have touching his skin. Captain Safari! I know him! I sat at his feet again in New York. The winter after the summer workshop, I took Lish's class for six months (he gave me a discount). It was held every Monday night in a rich woman's Fifth Avenue apartment.

Most of Jungle Jim's nightly discourses consisted of pitting us against each other or pitting writers he'd published against other writers he'd published. We learned that one will never be too accomplished to transcend failure. Amy Hempel, for example, was his golden child during the summer. He sang her praises every day. But now he told us how she'd started a novel that was no good. He told her to scrap it. (Apparently she did.)

During the summer, Lish announced that Harold Brodkey's novel "Party of Animals" was the best novel of the last 50 years. Six months later, he said it should never see publication. (It didn't.)

Besides provoking published writers to be as neurotic as unpublished ones, Lish practiced the cult of the sentence. "You must feel that the next sentence you write is the most shining sentence ever written." And "Don't have stories -- have sentences." "Each sentence must flow from the preceding sentence." In other words: "The second sentence follows the first. The third follows the second. The fourth the third." That's it. That was the million-dollar secret. Now, this may not seem like much, but if you're a writer prone to random acts of association (as I am), Lish's simple mantra is a lifesaver.

There are two other things I admire about Gordon Lish that I can list. He was once a radio announcer and had (probably still has) the best ear for language around. I'd sit in a room and somebody would read something that sounded pretty good, but Lish would still catch problematic nuances that everyone else's ears had missed.

The second thing I admire: Lish as an example of the greatness of American naiveté. In the late 1950s, he packed his wife and kids in the car and relocated his family to San Francisco so he could hang out with Dean Moriarty. Yes! He did this! I love a man who was once so green and open that he assumed Dean was real.

But then, know this about Gordon Lish: This former editor doesn't want to be remembered as anyone's editor. He wants to be known as an author. He's written more than a half-dozen books, and he's searching for his place at the metaphorical table of American letters. But every time he sits down, he jumps back up, kicking the chair over. That chair isn't right. He stalks around looking for a different one. But what's really bugging Lish is that he wants to sit at the head of the table. Some of us say Lish's friend Don DeLillo (they once dedicated books to each other) is the one who gets to sit at the head of the table. Others consign Raymond Carver. But whoever gets to sit there, it will never never never be Gordon Lish. The man's books are godawful. This condition -- his ego vs. the reality of his talent -- is enough to send anyone back to the bughouse. It's enough to make anyone who once read him a sentence now pray for his absolution, if not his salvation.
SALON | Sept. 1, 1998

David Bowman, whose most recent novel is "Bunny Modern," is a regular contributor to Salon.