Talk:Gordon Lish

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Contents 1 Genesis West 2 Please clean up the prose 2.1 Yeah. 3 Comments 4 Recent edits 5 Copyedit 6 Mysterium

[edit] Genesis West

I started the literary magazine Chrysalis in the late 1950s at San Francisco State Univ. and made Gordon Lish co-editor from the second issue on. He later took over the magazine and renamed it Genesis West. Chrysalis was his first venture into the literary world and I believe his first short fiction publication. We have remained friends since then but we both have lost contact with one another over the years and several times. I also co-wrote a thriller novel with Lish that we never tried to market. He also was instrumental in helping me get my first agent in International Creative Managament. He was always extremely helpful to me and to any writer who came to him who Gordon thought of as deserving of his help. Contrary to the public persona -- that of being difficult and unpleasant, Gordon Lish was one of the kindest writer/editors I have met in a very long time in this business. His only criteria was that of excellence. All writing should be fresh, new, dangerous, risky -- that was what he stood for and that is what will go down in the literary history of the second half of the 20th century in the U.S.

John Herrmann

Ah, so you were behind Genesis West! As I was commenting on the Jack Gilbert page, someone really needs to write a wiki article about Gordon. He played a behind the scenes role for many, many writers who otherwise might never have been known. He published a few of my poems in TQ, and I felt very lucky.

His manner could be very eccentric and vitriolic, he was not diplomatic, and he was unabashedly biased toward whatever he happened to like. And more than any editor I have ever known, he truly cared about nurturing good writing, and was passionate about the writers whose work he liked. Once he decided he liked your work, there was almost literally nothing he would not do to encourage you further. He was also, not incidentally, an extraordinary editor-- his expert cuts helped to forghe Raymond Carver's distinctive voice. They don't make 'em like Gordon anymore.

If you would like to collaborate on an article about him, please let's take a crack at this.

[edit] Please clean up the prose

Take a look at how many times sentences begin with "He" (about halfway down you will notice), or "Gordon." A great American writer deserves better than that. It reads like an idiot wrote the paragraphs. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vernorstanton (talk • contribs) 11:16, 9 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Yeah.

I'm taking a break for a bit; if anyone happens to come by looking for something to do, this page is riddled with adventure!

• As Vernorstanton noted above, the small grammatical nuances need some maintenance.
• The "External links" and "Bibliography" sections are gargantuan and need to be pruned big time.
• There is an excessive amount of name-dropping. What to do about that...?
• Many of the links on this page lead to this page. Funny how that works. I recommend either unlinking them, or making articles (rather than circles) about the links.
• Eat a bundt cake.
• I'm serious, they're not expensive! Go out and get yourself a bundt cake!

Okay, I'mma get my break on. V-Man737 06:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

So, there are far, far too many external links and bibliographic entries. Wikipedia is expressly not a repository for lists of these things. I would advocate paring the bibliography down to 10 things at most and eliminating all but a couple of the most representative links.

Furthermore, I think it's obvious that the prose needs some work, the article is simply too long and it delves into trivial and unnecessary detail in almost every one of its (too many) subsections. I can tweak the prose here and there but I don't want to edit the appendices until a couple other people offer opinions on them.--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 07:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

In fact, most of those external links should really be used as footnotes, as they are the sources for the articles.--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 08:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I did a lot of pruning, removing the very long lists and directory-like information, as well as a lot of the redundancies. Still could use work.--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 08:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent edits

I went section by section and attempted to improve the prose as well as eliminate circular links, redundant and excessive lists (particularly of names), and reorganize slightly to improve flow. I do not have a particular connection to this article or its subject and my only desire is to give a major writer/editor his due with a good, wikified article. I believe the previous incarnation was a very good set of raw materials, and it's terrific that sometime took the time to type in all those lists, but they did not add much to the article but length, and as it stood, it was unlikely to be taken particularly seriously (or even read all the way through) by other readers. I think that it would be best to add stuff back (perhaps using the edit history, which is pretty transparent) rather than revert to the old version, which just invites other editors to come in and spend more time doing what I think I've already done here.--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 16:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyedit

I have given this article a good trim - the language was over familiar and rather poor; I have also removed a lot of quite unnecessary links which added nothing and made the page overbearing Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Whisper...) 08:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I was hesitant to remove all those links because I thought it might turn into a conflict with the user who obviously spent a LONG time typing them all out.--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 00:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mysterium

Mysterium was never published. It was abandoned. --Mewlhouse 20:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I have removed it from the listing Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Whisper...) 09:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)