Article on Gordon Lish, Raymond Carver and Barry Hannah

 

carver hannah lish critiquecarver hannah lish critique

Cover of New Issue of CRITIQUE

Article on Lish, Carver, Hannah in new CRITIQUE

New issue of Critique: Studies in Contempoary Fiction 52.4 contains my 10,000 word article, “Saying More Without Trying to Say More: On Gordon Lish Re-Shaping the Body of Raymond Carver and Saving Barry Hannah,” which is also, in a slightly expanded version, the second chapter in my overdue study on Lish contracted with Routledge. Did initial research in 2008 at Indiana University; submitted paper in 2009 while in Los Angeles and quickly accepted; published 2011 while I am in New York.

RIP Barry Hannah

Was floored and bummed when I heard of the passing of Barry Hannah.

First read him back in 1988-89, in the depths of my Lish Phase, and grabbing every Vintage Contemporaries paperback I could — Airships, and then Ray and Boomerang.

I re-read Hannah often — whether it is Hannah or Gordon Lish in those sentences, some mighty powerful stuff. I am wondering if I should do a full critical book — there are only two out.

HTML Giant has a post on Hannah, and I mentioned my essay and Gordon Lish book where I discovered, when looking at the Hannah manuscripts in Lish’s archives,  that Lish had saved the career of a writer bedeviled with booze and drugs and life, and several assholes claimed it self pormo.

To paraphrase William Carlos Williams: “There are a lot of assholes [bastards] out there.”

The pettiness of the small world of writers, would be writers, and publishers never ceases to make me shake my head and shrug.

Carver Bibliographic Checklist by Michael Hemmingson

The annual hardbound journal, Resources for American Literary Studies, will publish, later this year, my bibliography of Raymond Carver’s limited editions, chaopbooks, and broadsides that are quite hard to find and hiused in specal collection libraries.  It’s a 5,200 word piece, annotated and detailed.

Since when did I, Hemmingson!, become a bibliographer?  Well, I am doing an annotated bib on William T. Vollmann for Scarecrow Press.

Lish/Carver/Hannah Essay

My 13,000 word essay on Gordon Lish editing both Raymond Carver and Barry Hannah has been accepted for publication in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction.

I now have three or four pieces in inventory there, since summer 2007, and none have been published yet….such is the nature of academic publishing.  Good thing I’m not up for tenure or looking for a teaching gig!

Old School Esquire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have obtained a copy of the Oct. 1970 issue of Esquire, with Hemingway’s “Bimini” from Islands in the Stream, and Richard Brautigan’s “Lost Chapters of Trout Fishing in America.” This is a Gordon Lish-era issue; the Hemingway excerpt is the basis of an essay I wrote that will be in this year’s number of The Hemingway Review.

What’s cool is that it is over-sized, printed on thick slick paper, with ads for 8 Track tape memberships, a photo spread of Johnny Carson in his late 1960s suits, an eassy about Robert Redford…

I was 5 years old when this issue came out.

Current Projects I am Trying, TRYING to Finish and Get Out the Door, Arrarah!

1. Revisions on Star Trek TV crit monograph.

2. Finish Zombie Girls from Jupiter Attack! — novel

3. Get first 100 pages of Lunch on the Grass done to send out. Long novel.

4. Finish critical book: Women in the Stories and Life of Raymond Carver.

5.  Revise Gordon Lish book, once peer review reports come in.

6. Cyberpunk novel/future blog project for Ninthlink.com — long term project called Half Click.

7. Finish proposal for Tijuana Cartel history project and get to agent.,

8. Finish two ethnographic projects for SUNY Press.

9. Get anthology, First Person Sociology, together.

10. Start/finish iBLOGGER, monograph on blogging and symbolic interactionism/ethnometyhodology. Due end of the year to Cambridge Scholars.

11. Complete book of autoethnography essays.  Due in Fall to Cambridge Scholars.

12. Finish Vollmann bibliography. Due in April to Scarecrow Press.

13. Wim Wenders anthology…what the hell happened to that?  Overdue to Lexington Books.

14. Work on long stories for a collection of long stories. 2-3 year project.

15. Get pages together for Blue Pill novel.

16. Work on homeless issues book.

17. Find publisher for Hemingway/self psychology project.

18. Finish screenplay, North Hollywood.

19. Finish teleplay pilot, Sanchez & Kelly.

20. Find publisher for Remembering Rawanda.

 

I’m fucking crazy.

Explicating Carver in The Explicator

Academic quarterlies are often behind in schedule — case in point, The Explicator, just issued its Summer 20o08 and Fall 2008 issues at the same time. I have work in both — three explication notes on Raymond Carver’s stories — in the Summer issue, they’re on self-image in “Intimacy” and how Gordon Lish edited “Tell The Women We’re Going;” in the Fall, on Gordon Lish’s editing “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” a.k.a. “Beginners,” which was the big to-do in last year’s Xmas issue of The New Yorker, with correspondence, and on-line, a play-by-play, or cut-by-cut, blow-by-blow showing of the edits.

I have essays on Carver forthcoming in Modern Language Studies, Critique, and ANQ, all the foundation for my work-in-progress Women in the Work and Life of Carver (hopefully out this time next year if I get it in to McFarland & Co. by February).

Academics and Hollywood

In acadmics, I have a review-essay, “The Agency of Splooge,” in the Fall 2008 issue of The Journal of Sex Research.

In Hollywood, my script, Fifty Bucks, and novel, Wild Turkey, are being optioned.

In acadmeics, I turned in the ms. to the Gordon Lish book on Monday…

In Hollywood, I should hear from Sundance screenwriting lab soon, whether or not ‘ll be in Park City this January for my script, The Gold Tooth, and adaptation of Frank Norris’ McTeague.