Lish - Goings : in thirteen sittings

WITH WRITING REMINISCENT OF STEIN OR BECKETT, LISH REMINDS HIS READERS THAT THE ACTUAL PAST AND THE REMEMBERED PAST ARE DIFFERENT, AND HE FLESHES OUT EVERY POSSIBLE PERSPECTIVE

THE BOSTON REVIEW

LISH HAS PRODUCED A WEALTH OF AVANT-GARDE PROSE, WORTHY OF THE PIONEERS OF LITERARY MODERNISM. HIS WRITING REPRESENTS THE USS ANSWER TO SAMUEL BECKETT AND THOMAS BERNHARD.

THE GUARDIAN

Goings: In Thirteen Sittings is Gordon Lishs first completely original work in sixteen years, thirteen stories that mark the ongoing vitality of one of the eras enduring scribes.

While he is widely acknowledged as perhaps the most influential editor since Maxwell Perkins, it is in his own writing that Lishs genius is made manifest. There, his quick wit and black humor are on full display, as well as a merciless intellect that skewers no one so thoroughly as a narrator most often known as Gordon. In the stories in Goings , Lish wrestles with memory; self-knowledge (the lack and the impossibility thereof); friendship; mothers, sons and lovers. More than that, the language here is a collective paradigm of Lishian prose: a great writers attempt to leap off the page.

ALSO BY GORDON LISH

Collected Fictions

Krupps Lulu

Arcade

Self-Imitation of Myself

Selected Stories

Epigraph

Zimzum

My Romance

Extravaganza

Mourner at the Door

Peru

What I Know So Far

Dear Mr. Capote

All Our Secrets Are the Same (ed.)

The Secret Life of Our Times (ed.)

New Sounds in American Fiction (ed.)

A Mans Work

Why Work (ed.)

English Grammar

All entries 2013 Gordon Lish

Published by OR Books, New York and London

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First printing 2013

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-939293-33-6 paperback

ISBN 978-1-939293-34-3 e-book

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Printed by BookMobile in the U.S. and CPI Books Ltd in the U.K.
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TO MARIE-MADELEINE GEKIERE

Language becomes a compromised ideology,
or else it becomes an idol.
In either case,
we have nothing but trouble.

DENIS DONOGHUE

Mother ! Father! Please!

ANON.

MY PERSONAL MEMOIR

THERE WAS A game we played. Maybe it wasnt a game in and of itself. Is a ball a game? Sure, a ball is not a game. But you can make a game with it, cant you? What cant you make a game with, or of? You just have to decide you are going to do it, is all. Or not even make up your mind and go ahead and decide as such. All you have to do is take the thing and start doing something with it and then say to a boy on the block can you do this and then you show the boy that you yourself can, and then the next thing of it is that that particular boy has to see if he can do it and if he can do it too or even if he cant, well, I ask you, I sit here and in all honesty I ask you, is there or is there not already enough of a game going from just that much of it already, or even better, lets say he cant do it, the boy, that particular boy, then even better, even better if he cant, except who can say, maybe before you know it youre the boy whos sorry you started the whole thing in the first place because maybe the boy we were talking about, maybe he can go ahead and do it better than you can do it and then you wish you had never even taken the reins and started the game and could instead of any of that instead just stop playing it but you cant stop playing it, you cant, you cant, because every time that particular boy on the block comes around hes got the thing you need for the game with him and he says to you hey look, can you do this, can you, can you, even if all you have to do is do it as many times as he can, or do it a little farther than he can, or do it faster, for instance, than he can, or, well, you know, more times, more times, or do it some other way different like that.

It was like that when I was a boy.

So the thing itself in the case which I am thinking about, it was a little red balland there was this mysterious way they had of getting the little red ball stuck to a pretty long red rubber string and the string, well, it itself was stapledthe string, okay?yes, yes, thats exactly the word, stapled, stapled, thats it exactly, this pretty long red rubber stringit was stapled to a paddle, and so thats the general thing which I want for you to picture for yourself, the paddle and the ball and the stringare you with me?the paddle and the ball and the string, which the whole idea of the game was for you to grab the paddle in your hand and see if you could toss the little red ball up a little bit and then smack it with the paddle and then keep on smacking it with the paddle until you missed it altogether or, you know, you just didnt smack it right and it went all crazy in the wrong direction and then it was the other boys turn, then it was his time for his turn, or if there were a lot of other boys, which was the way it just so happened to be on my particular block, because on my particular block it was a block with a lot of different boys on it, it was a block with all sorts of different kinds of boys on it, and yes, yes, dont kid yourself, even at this day and age I could name every one of these various different boys if you dared me to, I could, I really truly could, if you happen to want for us to take the time it would take for me to go ahead and look all of the way back in my mind and name every single last one of them or, okay, okay, maybe if truth be told, maybe I wouldnt be absolutely able to name every last one of them but you can bet your bottom dollar I could probably name plenty enough of them for me to give you the general drift of the thing I am taking the trouble to sit here and tell you about, such as the Stanleys, for instance, such as the Stanleys themselves, for instance, who were, for your personal information, the biggest of all of the boys on the block and who I wouldnt at this particular point in history be the least little bit surprised if they were probably the oldest of all of us too, Stanley R. Florin, for instance, and Stanley S. Baughman, for a second instance, thats right, Im right, those were the two Stanleys, Stanley R. Florin and Stanley S. Baughman, they were referred to as the Stanleys, or as the two Stanleys, and they were pretty good at the game, let me sit here and tell you that the two Stanleys, that they were pretty goddamn terrific at it, yes indeedy, I am here at this point in history to goddamn tell you the Stanleys were good, the two Stanleys were great, the two Stanleys were the best at the game that anybody at that particular time on the block was, them just going ahead and taking the paddle from you and then smacking the little red ball with it and then just keeping on smacking the crap out of it and then on and on and, wow, holy cow, making the little red ball come whipping right back at the paddle to smack the shit out of it all over again and then smack it some more and keep smacking it some more and, you see, you see, just look at it, are you really trying with your mind to look at it, either of the Stanleys just smacking that little red ball every time the long red rubber string goes snapping out and then comes snapping back at the paddle againand then again and then again and then this way and then that way until, Jesus, who could stand there and believe it anymore, until you just had to stand there praying and hoping and hoping and praying your turn was never going to come up again but no matter how much you stood there pleading with Jesus Himself, you waiting and waiting and pleading with Jesus please Jesus please dont let it, dont, dont, please dont let my turn come again, please Jesus please, but it would, it would, oh you bet it would, and there you were, standing there with the vicious paddle all ashamed all over again and sad so sad so awful sad from just standing and standing and from hearing yourself screaming out loud to yourself inside of yourself for it all of it to be all over and finished again, please, for it all of it to stop, just stop, just for it to break and be broken, string gone, ball gone, paddle flown out of your hand and for everybody, for all of the boys, for them just to fall over and finally be dead.