Gordon Lish: ‘Had I not revised Carver, would he be paid the attention given him? Baloney!’

Christian Lorentzen talks to the legendary editor in an extract from a forthcoming issue of the Paris ReviewIt’s the custom for editors to keep a low profile and to underplay any changes they may make to an author’s manuscript. Gordon Lish is a different animal. Not since Maxwell Perkins has an editor been so famous – or notorious – as a sculptor of other people’s prose. As fiction editor of Esquire from 1969 to 1977, then as an editor at Knopf and of the Quarterly until 1995, Lish worked closely with many of the most daring writers of the past 50 years, including Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo, Barry Hannah and Joy Williams. In an interview with the Paris Review in 2004, Hannah said: “Gordon Lish was a genius editor. A deep friend and mentor. He taught me how to write short stories. He would cross out everything so there’d be like three lines left, and he would be right.”His collaborations have not always ended amicably. His editorial relationship with Carver ceased after three books. When Lish donated his papers to the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington, they indeed showed that he had drastically cut, and often rewritten, some of Carver’s best-loved stories. For the Collected Stories, published in 2009, Carver’s widow, Tess Gallagher, printed some of them in both edited and unedited versions. The critical reaction was divided. In the New York Times book review, Stephen King described the effect on one story as “a total rewrite … a cheat”; in the New York... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2015-12-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Attention Parents: The Bible Has Your Back

Christian parenting, Lifeway, Devin Maddox, Zondervan, Webster Younce, MennoMedia, Crossway, Paraclete, Lillian Miao, IVP, Elissa Schauer Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-09-03 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Geoff Bouvier on Revising History

The author of the poetic history 'Us from Nothing' calls for an accurate reclamation of facts in storytelling. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-08-29 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Riot, Grrrls: Marisa Crawford on Why Feminist Lit and 1990s Girl Culture Need More Critical Attention

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[ Literrary Hub | 2024-04-08 08:54:36 UTC ]
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Winter Institute 2024: Happenings Back Home Split Some Booksellers’ Attention

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-02-14 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Spotify swings to loss as it adds 200,000 audiobooks to paid service

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[ The Guardian | 2024-02-06 15:45:35 UTC ]
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Spotify claims to have paid audiobook publishers ‘tens of millions’ in royalties

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ALA Seeks Member Input on 'Freedom to Read Statement' Revision

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-09-08 04:00:00 UTC ]
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A Summary and Analysis of Raymond Carver’s ‘Happiness’

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[ Interesting Literature | 2023-08-12 14:00:47 UTC ]
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Read Marilynne Robinson’s 1988 review of Raymond Carver’s final collection.

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[ Literrary Hub | 2023-05-25 17:31:12 UTC ]
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Practice Makes Perfect, and Also Nothing Matters: Emily St. John Mandel on Revision and Recklessness

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[ Literrary Hub | 2023-04-27 08:53:45 UTC ]
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This Baby Book Series Satirizes Lack of Parental Paid Leave

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Attention: a new Zadie Smith novel is coming this fall.

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Attention: a new Jesmyn Ward novel is coming this fall.

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[ Literrary Hub | 2023-01-27 15:09:45 UTC ]
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A Summary and Analysis of Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’

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[ Interesting Literature | 2023-01-22 15:00:57 UTC ]
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[ The Guardian | 2022-11-15 17:10:25 UTC ]
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