Re: Gordon Lish [was 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature: Gunter Grass]

Cecilia A. Baader (cbaader@my-Deja.com)
Fri, 15 Oct 1999 13:52:49 -0700 

Since you mention it,  I thought that I would post a brief excerpt, my favorite in fact, from "For Jerome, with Love and Kisses" by Gordon Lish.  Old Jerome David's father is a bit peeved at the way he throws away both his name and his fame, and has more than a little to say about it:

   "You remember when years and years ago you sat yourself down and you wrote about this woman who's so fat and all day long she sits on her porch and listens to the radio?  Darling, I'm going back years now, but do you remember?  So because this creature was so lonely and also dying and so forth, it was you yourself which said, please God, the people on the radio should all get together and do for her their utmost, since what's the woman got in the whole wide world except the people which talk on the radio?

   "Sweetheart, sonny boy, I don't have to tell you it was you yourself which said this with your own two lips.  So don't make a federal case, Jerome-- the difference is your father got a _television_.  Are you saying to me it's not the same principle?

   "Please darling, for your father, and so please God you wouldn't have to contradict yourself, be a sport and go on "Merv Griffin."


He goes on to tell him about the ribbing he gets in the retirement home for having such a reclusive son.  It's well worth the read - Lish does and excellent job with the voice of a Jewish father.

I found this story in the 1984 O. Henry Awards Anthology.  William Abrahams, ed.,  but it did indicate that it was also part of the following short story anthology:
 
Author:  Lish, Gordon.  
Title:  What I know so far  
Published:  New York : Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, c1984.  
Format:  162 p. ; 22 cm.  
Notes:  "A William Abrahams book."
ISBN:  0030706092

I haven't physically looked at _What I Know So Far_, so I cannot absolutely swear that it's in there.  In court, my testimony would be thrown out as hearsay, as I haven't actually seen it with my own two eyes, I'm only going by what I read in a secondary source.

---
On Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:19:24   William Hochman wrote:
>In the antioch review Gordon Lish wrote "A Fool for Salinger" and said "In
>fact, I wrote the story 'For Jerome--with love and kisses" out of the
>model of what I dinot want to know about fathers and their children (is is
>different for mothers?), turning  myslef into my own father and (back to
>'For Esme--With Love and Squalor' again) inot Salinger's father who has
>ever been stumped by the nature of what he ahs wrought."
>
>can someone post the citation of "For Jerome" (I want to hit up my
>interlibrary loan!) will


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