Jul 25 2010
Gordon Lish :: On New Book & Writing
I read an interview with Gordon Lish on BOMBLOG and some of his answers made me mull.
But the only one that I remembered enough to try and reference in conversation a few days after reading his interview is Lish’s take on what a writer tries to do with the opening sentence.
He says, “Well the opening is to get the thing opened, to overcome the inertia of silence, indifference. Whatever means convince you you have achieved this effect ordain what follows.”
He then clarifies that by silence he means “The silence that precedes the writer beginning to write,” as opposed to the silence that precedes the reader beginning to read.
A little later, Lish gets giddy when asked about the FORWARD to his new book, COLLECTED FICTIONS.
He says, “Wow, that bit, it’s nuts! What the deuce was I up to? Yet, let it not become hypertrophic in me, but I have been taken with the feeling that the preface discloses, however opaque, what’s truest of me. I produced it as fast as I could write it and concluded, queerly, I’d stand by it no matter what. Apart from its drift as reference, there’s words in there I’m not certain are to be found anywhere else.”
And I grew curious about the FORWARD. I wanted to read at least the FORWARD, if nothing else. I found it online at OR BOOKS.
And then I did a little ctrl c + ctrl v for ease of passage:
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