Epigraph

by Gordon Lish

Told through a series of letters written to various church volunteers, an account of a man reflecting on a particularly draining period of his life takes place after the death of his wife of several decades and presents an unflinching portrait of grief and its impact. IP.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literature, Humor, Death

156 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Gordon Jay Lish is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, and Richard Ford.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘What’s so wrong with a man who is fond of Social Tea and Biscuits?’

Much like the word that serves as the namesake of Gordon Lish’s 1996 novel, Epigraph, Lish has created a duality of self that runs—or, more appropriately, writes amok through the darkly comedic novel. After the death of his wife, Barbara, who shares the same name and tragic demise as Gordon Lish the author’s own wife, character Gordon Lish writes a series of letters to those surrounding him from the in-home nurses to the church, hospital and even to the recently departed. Gordon—Gordon!— Lish simply wants to understand and be understood, to reach out for affection and caress the human bond, but his methods are not exactly the most polite (‘I want to see your bosoms,’ he writes in a letter to a nurse praising her months of service.’Yours are the bosoms that tremble, not the bosoms that shake.’) and Lish reverts into bitter assaults when bitten or an admission of being ‘pooped’ and overwhelmed. My personal favorite letters concern the refusal to return the hospital bed and his various reasons for not doing so, or the scathing letters in response to the deceased being summoned for jury duty. The novel, composed solely of his letter, is a one-sided conversation that manages to hone in on the humanity of the situation and allow their creator to assess his own affairs and psychological condition. Outrageously funny despite the bleakness, Epigraph is a uniquely literary epigraph to the passing of Mrs. Lish in both reality and fiction that probes the human soul while opening up the poetic gap between author and author character.

Dear St. E’s,
Could I explain something to you? I’m going to explain something to you. What’s mine is mine. You people never hear of squatter’s rights? Look it up—squatters rights. I’m sitting on it. I am reclining on it. It’s tilted at the three-quarter tilt, which is the best tilt for me to be tilted in it at to write assholes like you letters in it. Anyway, get the fuck off my back!
Yours in impermanent patience,
Mr. Gordon Lish

There is a great joy to be found when you read several books chosen seemingly at random and find they share a common thread and work as if in conversation with each other to examine a particular aspect of fiction. Recently, books such as Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights, Aira’s How I Became a Nun and Luiselli’s Faces in the Crowd have made me keenly interested in the blurring of an author as author and the author as fictionalized self. Reading these books brought Epigraph back into mind, which I had read this past summer and first started the gears of thought churning on this subject. While Hardwick builds backwards, weaving fact and fiction to examine her past leading up to the present ‘self’ reflecting back, Lish latches fiction onto the present and boldly presses forward into a ‘possible future’ with a narrator that both is and isn’t Gordon Lish. Written after the death of his wife, Barbara, the Gordon Lish found in Epigraph is also grieving the loss of his wife Barbara, deceased under similar conditions. Lish teases the Intentional Fallacy, bringing his Gordon—Gordon!— Lish to the closest proximity of The Gordon Lish and extracting the highest possible effect. The Lish in Epigraph has suffered the same tragedies, and is even intensely interested in examining grammar (‘Don’t you dare think I’m through with you! Or, actually, it’s probably think me through with you.’) as one would imagine the Great Editor G.W. Lish would be. It is easy to entertain the idea that this is who Lish really is, and fun to do so, and Lish reminds us of the infinite possibilities of the magic of Literature in doing so. Also, using what most would consider a touchy subject and examining it in this highly and darkly comedic manner reminds us that, for the true writer, nothing should be sacrosanct.

The title 'Epigraph' primarily refers to both an inscription on a monument, this book being the monument to the deceased, and to the quotes that precede a novel. The constant usurpation of the father, F.W. Lish, in the epigraphs before and after the book points towards an understanding of the G.Lish of the book. As his sanity deteriorates on the pages, he opens up about a cold childhood and difficult relations with his parents. Lish manages to make us empathize with the cantankerous bastard cursing out everyone, putting us in the uncomfortable shoes of ‘What would you do if somebody said to you for you to do something and you weren't really actually yet big enough yet for you to actually yet do it?’

Wildly comedic, with enough ‘fuck you’s’ to make anyone’s head spin, Epigraph is a wonderful example of how literary theory can be put to use in engaging and wholly entertaining ways. From the poetic mirroring of the self and the dualities of meaning found therein, to just good old fashion laughs at Lish offending everyone around him, this novel probes the darkest corners of the heart without feeling burdenous or dark.
4.5/5

Dear St. E’s,
Up yours. I would not join your religion if you paid me.
Zay gezunt,
Gordon Jay Lish

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of letters (many finished, some not) written by a narrator with the same name as the author, this short novel challenges the reader to find meaning in the epistles written to a dozen or so people and institutions. Lish has recently become a widower, and his one-way narration (we never read responses to the letters) is often funny and irreverent. While we are working to understand the events of his wife's death we are also witnessing a man's struggle with sanity and relevance.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel of demented bereavement told in the form of unrestrained and/or unfinished letters to various former spousal carers, friends, and clerks of the court from the grieving narrator also called Gordon Lish. As in Lish’s previous work, the peculiar placement of the words in the whirl of the sentence where in the whirl the words are at their whirliest and weirdest the words themselves often weird comical blindsides to whit “jibby-jibby” and the like alike. Lish is the most peculiar, disconcerting American writer out there—one minute hitting you will hilarious, freewheeling rants, the next obscure self-referential jibby-jibby, the next subtle and haunting insights into the tragic farce of mortality, giving him a candour to shame the sentimental realists and the cynical heart-tuggers.

[M. Sarki · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/ep...

In numerous correspondences a husband with the same name as the author Gordon Lish attempts to eventually come to grips with his grief and the particularities of certain Mercy Women and civil authorities who had come to govern his home and life while in the death throes of his wife’s long and painful illness and decline. The fact that these Mercy Women who managed the bulk of his wife’s daily care were Christians seemed to drive a deeper wedge into the open wounds of Gordon Jay Lish who himself was raised a Jew. Lish constantly makes pleas to all of them, and uses diatribes in his letters to secure his point on a growing number of issues that tend to be judged by certain strict fundamentalists too harshly, when in fact, the vast majority of us behave in much the same manner as does this now-over-excitable and frighteningly-lonely character Lish. It is obvious that in his mind he must now cross over these religious and civil barriers his perceived aggressors have drawn as lines in the sand for him. How dare these women cast their vile at him for now wanting a bit of hot sex he hadn’t religiously enjoyed for years during his wife’s prolonged and unjust illness? And why do the civil courts keep summoning his dead wife with their notices for jury duty? It is enough to drive the poor man crazy.

Dear Mrs. Florism,

…If I am wrong, tell me I am wrong. Hesitate not. I could not bear to think that you might be at all hesitant not to hesitate me not. Come see me. I want to see your bosoms. Yours are the bosoms that tremble, not the bosoms that shake. If I am wrong, if I go too far and am wrong, then write it off to the paper I am writing this to you on—but please, please, please, not to breathe a word of this to Mr. Florism for I am very afraid, very afraid, very afraid…

Dear Mrs. Florism,

Please, please, please—I am so dreadfully sorry for what I said and so unbridledly ashamed of it and am consequently desirous in the veriest extreme of you keeping it to your self and of you not making any mention of it to your mister.

Yours apologetically.

Mr. Gordon Lish, in bereavement


Is it too much of me to think that Gordon Lish may have taken the greatest risk and told the utmost truth of his despair, he while in the midst of such grief over the loss of his wife and life they shared together for so many years? His expression in words amounting to the affects of an extremely troubled soul? To have finally been forced to let go of romantic dreams they made together of creating a loving home, their lives so totally immersed into the arts of dance and literature? A bereavement so wretched that the afflicted man escapes into the arms and sex of anyone available to him to provide him comfort from his extreme pain and suffering? It is plain to see between these covers that Gordon Lish is finally having his own nervous breakdown. And he deserves it after eight long years tending as nurse to his long-suffering wife. And what is a little sexual attention among friends, or even the occasional stranger? And why not enjoy recreating, lounging at a three-quarter tilt in the previously-used Lauchesset that his wife Barbara had suffered in for so long? Or using her discarded letter board as a perfectly fine hard surface in which to write his daily correspondences on? Gordon relaxes himself in this Lauchesset while wrestling with numerous demons who not only want their valuable chair returned but continually harass the now-posturing man with their constant reminders.

Along with the obvious, and present throughout, are birds and hermit crabs, all with names as pets, and their eventual personal accidents resulting in their own deaths and the messes that their additional dying consists of. Plus there are freshly-baked cakes, and the woman who makes them, as well as the one who eats. And a woman’s heels of the one who eats that grip his arching back in order to skillfully draw their naked genitals even closer, and all the while a loose finch or two threatens to claw his bare behind and unclothed vulnerabilities. There seems to be feathers afloat everywhere. But no ranting can save him from his suffering.

Of course, as with any Lish offering, there is never a resolution in which to hang your hat on. And there is no sense of ever coming home, especially, to roost.

[Cherylann · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was in Strand with my boyfriend, I unwittingly picked up this book, Epigraph, not realizing that only a few days before I had been trashing the moral fiber of its author. I apparently hadn’t seen the author’s name, otherwise I would have put it right back on the shelf. I certainly wouldn’t have read it.

I read an article in the New Yorker that showed a collection of letters between Gordon Lish and Raymond Carver (the author of Will You Please Be Quiet Please? and What We Talk About When we Talk about Love). Lish was Carver’s editor and had basically gotten Carver his “big break”. The subject of these letters was the edits that had been made on Carvers most recent story: “A Small Good Thing”.

I say the subject of the letters was the “edits” made to "A Small Good Thing", but it would probably be more accurate to call it the rewrite of the story. Gordon Lish had not only shortened the story by over 20 pages (leaving 8), he had also renamed characters and even changed the title of the story to “The Bath”. I read both stories, before and after butcher Lish had “trimmed the fat” and came to a few conclusions.

1) “The Bath” and “A Small Good Thing” were entirely different stories.
2) Raymond Carver was indeed too wordy, but not enough to cut 20 pages.
3) Gordon Lish had crossed the line.

I sympathized with Raymond Carver (even though he is a bit wordy for my taste) especially after reading his increasingly desperate letters. He couldn’t bear to publish “The Bath.” It wasn’t the story he had intended to write. I hated Lish on the principle that he had significantly overstepped his role as editor. After reading Epigraph, however I am forced to conclude that although he may be an awful editor, he is a very entertaining writer.

I admit that I had not much of a clue what was going on throughout the book. That really wasn’t a problem though. Lish’s writing speaks for itself. His use of words is incredibly satisfying and amusing. If a writer reaches a point, where the plot of his or her book is utterly insignificant to its entertainment value, I would have to call them a successful writer.

Lish transcends the borders between storytelling and actual writing. He is a writer and one, against my own principles, enjoy thoroughly.

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This read, resulting directly (in my experience) from a recommendation, caught me unawares. It's a puzzler of an epistolary novel, as magical in rhythm as it is impenetrable in plot. Fortunately, plot here is not the point, so much as it seems to be about epistles themselves. Reading the narrator struggle with tone - some pages seem to represent discarded drafts - and elate in linguistic liberation pushes against the limited physical and moral confines of his life. There's certainly even much more going on here than I caught on to - readers more familiar with Lish's background may find extra-textual connections to ponder, but I only know him through his pupils - but what struck me most was the range of emotion elicited. It moved me enough to remark upon it into the void, and I expect its eccentricities will stick with me for a long time to come.

[James]

Gordon Lish is presumably a serious writer so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that there's a conceptual purpose behind his unbearably clichéd writing. This one was just too dull to continue. If you want to read someone having fun with cliché read Gilbert Sorrentino.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty fun and angsty Lish (about his wife), in the form of letters.

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

***4.5 stars***