Epigraph (Lish, Gordon) [Hardcover]

Gordon Lish (Author)

Book Description

Series: Lish, Gordon | Publication Date: October 16, 1996

This audacious, stunning novel will neither sooth critics nor disappoint readers. It is an account of a man looking back on a period of his life which has drained him utterly. Told through a series of letters, it takes place after the death of Lish's wife of several decades, Barbara, who died at home after a long and paralyzing illness. Epigraph is both bitterly self-critical and merciless in its assessment of the motivations and failings of others.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A man whose wife has died after seven years of illness sits in her deathbed to write a series of letters that disclose his loosening grasp of reality and demonstrate the twisted recriminations of a man bent by his painful loss. Gordon Lish gives us more spleen than sense in this troubling tract, and that is the point of his story. Indulgent in style and often profane in expression, readers looking for bracing missives of insanity have found their book; more pedestrian readers be forewarned.

From Publishers Weekly

Famous--and infamous--as an editor and teacher, Lish's stock in trade as a writer is an in-your-face eccentricity. His fiction flaunts autobiographical details, and here, with his usual audacity, Lish takes the tragedy of his wife's long dying and fashions it into an unnerving epistolary novel. A protagonist called Gordon Lish reflects on his wife's death in a series of letters addressed to the Mercy Persons of her church, who provided succor and helped donate the "mechanism" that for a time sustained life as she lay paralyzed, equipment that the widower now refuses to return. The letters are phrased in curiously fussy and old-fashioned locutions and begin with scrupulous politeness--even when "Lish" is pleading with a court clerk to stop sending his wife summonses for jury duty. This spouse is soon, however, revealed as having gone off his rocker, as he contradicts his earlier praise, casts aspersions on the Mercy Persons ("a more ruinous bunch of slatterns I think I shall never see") and makes vicious accusations about each of the volunteers in turn. Gradually, it emerges that "Lish" may have been responsible for his wife's death; he certainly killed her canary, Wilhelm, in the bathtub, and maybe her hermit crab, Fred, and he is terrified about an accident to the dish on which "Mrs. Lish" demanded her morphine suppositories. He also reveals that he is "seeing" two ladies (one bakes cakes, the other raises finches) and that he has hated his father ever since a certain day in a boat. By the end, it's obvious that "Gordon Lish" is loony, psychotic, deranged. Readers will have to determine for themselves whether this book is a macabre romp or an exercise in excruciatingly bad taste.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 156 pages
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows; First Edition edition (October 16, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568580762
• ISBN-13: 978-1568580760
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,214,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A book to be re-read., December 7, 2004

By 

Rogue Literary Society - See all my reviews

This review is from: Epigraph (Lish, Gordon) (Hardcover)

How is it that a book can be read several times and never lose its luster? Could it be that there is something "timeless" within the covers of this book? Well I think so, and there are damn few of us who could write anything close to such a painful rant on the loss of one's wife, the mother of the love of one's life. If you knew Gordon Lish you would know he is NOT a sexist. He LOVES women! He HONORS women! That is why he gets so many of them. But it is sad when you know the years they spent with this sickness and disease called Lou Gehrig's. And it is heartbreaking to know the suffering this family went through together. And just the fact that this Gordon Lish had the heart to write this novel gives prudence to the claim of his greatness. Joyce knew, Eliot knew, Jack B. Yeats knew. Time for some of us to find out.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lish in the kitchen, picking up crumbs., February 20, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Epigraph (Lish, Gordon) (Hardcover)

Characteristically blurring the line between fiction and autobiography, the proper and the profane, Lish has created yet another beautiful and disturbing rant. Of all the expressions of grief, megalomania is at least the most creative, and here Lish lets the verbiage fly to the point of creating a new poetics, a language where the discerning reader (unfazed by Lish's blatant sexism) might find empathy for a thoroughly unlikeable narrator. "Epigraph" is a challenging "novella" that, while not one of Lish's best works, adds to his reputation as a postmodern busboy, and casts crumbs of brilliance on the dirty floor of literature's kitchen

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The ego has landed, December 5, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Epigraph (Lish, Gordon) (Hardcover)

The ego has landed! This novel began with an idea that,finally, wouldn't expand beyond the author's idea that he is gordon --Gordon! -- and we should all pant at every word. It's unfortunate because Lish is a superb writer of short fiction. We have 155 pages, with about 50% of the left hand pages blank and many of the right facing pages are less than half filled. Finally, the throbbing ego here makes the blank pages the best part of the story. John Herrmann <[e-mail]>