The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Epigraph by Gordon Lish
Brian Evenson

Gordon Lish. Epigraph. Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996. 163 pp. $22.00.

Near the end of his life, eighteenth-century writer Tobias Smollett confessed that his greatest difficulties had resulted from his being both a writer and an editor—those he offended with editorial decisions were always more than willing to take their frustrations out against his novels. Gordon Lish, whom Don DeLillo has called a man “famous for all the wrong reasons,” has perhaps had similar difficulties, his operations as an editor obscuring and sometimes injuring his reputation as a writer. Nevertheless, though currently still known for all the wrong reasons, with Epigraph Lish has a shot of becoming recognized for the right ones.

In Epigraph a character by the name of Gordon Lish (not to be confused either with the real Gordon Lish or with the Lishes of Lish’s earlier books, despite biographical similarities) struggles to avoid facing the fact of his wife’s demise after a long, difficult illness. In partial recoil he becomes fixated on the events surrounding his wife’s death and with justifying his own actions. When these events threaten to became too revealing he falls back to the relative safety of querying hyphenation and points of grammar, looking closely at the language so as to avoid understanding too closely what the language unveils. Spending his time reclined in the machine in which his wife died, he writes letters to the quasi-religious organizations which have helped him with her illness, tries by mail to hit on his wife’s nurses, responds to the court’s repeated request that his deceased wife report for jury duty. As all his repressions surge to the surface, he quickly writes himself mad.

The writing here is careful and consummate, the situation at once moving and shocking: the literary equivalent of simultaneously blessing and desecrating a grave. As the novel approaches its close, there begins to develop an erratic dance of guilt and madness, with Lish threatened by all that wells up from both immediate and distant past. In such an erratics, however, lies the only sort of salvation possible to a character such as Lish: to move through madness and burst through to the other side, to continue to write letters with a little more (perhaps temporary) calm, and to proceed forward fully in the face of death. Whatever one thinks of Lish as an editor, Epigraph is a powerful novel. [Brian Evenson]


Interview with Founder Board of Directors Funders Submission Guidelines Dalkey Archive Full Catalog Current and Forthcoming Titles Recent Titles Review of Contemporary Fiction Special Library Offer Special Backlist Sale Stores & Wholesalers Academics Libraries Reviewers Context Casebooks Author Interviews Links Dalkey Archive News Events Newsletter

The Review of Contemporary Fiction Epigraph by Gordon Lish Brian Evenson Gordon Lish. Epigraph. Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996. 163 pp. $22.00. Near the end of his life, eighteenth-century writer Tobias Smollett confessed that his greatest difficulties had resulted from his being both a writer and an editor—those he offended with editorial decisions were always more than willing to take their frustrations out against his novels. Gordon Lish, whom Don DeLillo has called a man “famous for all the wrong reasons,” has perhaps had similar difficulties, his operations as an editor obscuring and sometimes injuring his reputation as a writer. Nevertheless, though currently still known for all the wrong reasons, with Epigraph Lish has a shot of becoming recognized for the right ones. In Epigraph a character by the name of Gordon Lish (not to be confused either with the real Gordon Lish or with the Lishes of Lish’s earlier books, despite biographical similarities) struggles to avoid facing the fact of his wife’s demise after a long, difficult illness. In partial recoil he becomes fixated on the events surrounding his wife’s death and with justifying his own actions. When these events threaten to became too revealing he falls back to the relative safety of querying hyphenation and points of grammar, looking closely at the language so as to avoid understanding too closely what the language unveils. Spending his time reclined in the machine in which his wife died, he writes letters to the quasi-religious organizations which have helped him with her illness, tries by mail to hit on his wife’s nurses, responds to the court’s repeated request that his deceased wife report for jury duty. As all his repressions surge to the surface, he quickly writes himself mad. The writing here is careful and consummate, the situation at once moving and shocking: the literary equivalent of simultaneously blessing and desecrating a grave. As the novel approaches its close, there begins to develop an erratic dance of guilt and madness, with Lish threatened by all that wells up from both immediate and distant past. In such an erratics, however, lies the only sort of salvation possible to a character such as Lish: to move through madness and burst through to the other side, to continue to write letters with a little more (perhaps temporary) calm, and to proceed forward fully in the face of death. Whatever one thinks of Lish as an editor, Epigraph is a powerful novel. [Brian Evenson]

Search the full text of our books: