Mine looks like it may come out from a certain university press I will not name until I sign something, but every major writer has more than one bio out on them. I have “heard” Prof. Still has been working on a bio and I would not doubt it. Mu bio, however, is “interpretive” and written like a novel, so hopefuilly it will add to the collection of bios that are to come.

I really did wonder why there had not been a Carver bio yet. It seemed odd, unless Tess G. has declined authorization. Like Carol’s, mine will be unauthorized, and I think I may have uncovered some ground she didn’t, like two former Carver studnts at Iowa I talked to, and they never mentioned being contated by another biographer.

My book on Lish, however, will be published by Routledge, maybe late this year but for sure the first half of 2009, and is a critical overview of his own work as it relates to those he edited, which will be Carver, yes, but also Barry Hannah, Don DeLillo, Jack Gilbert, Amy Hempel, and another of others.

I agree with Maryann that Lish wished he could write like Carver and that does show in his first two colelctions of stories, but he later developed his own unique “Lish” style and that he has been unduly overlooked by the literary community because of the power he once had over so many careers and the shape of fiction in the 1980s. SOme editors can make that trasnition to major author, like EL Doctorow, who was once Kurt Vonnegut’s editor and editor of many big names in the 1960s before becoming a full time writer.

But my study does examine Lish’s INFLUENCE, hence the title, GORODN LISH AND HIS INFLUENCE ON 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE. And there is no denying he had quite an influence on publishing and a number of great writers working today. His legacy alone, that many new young writers “hear” about, also serves as an influence.

I should also mention — and Maryann will like this — I am coming out wth a critical study on Carver called CARVER’S WOMEN - Role, Place, and Identity of the Feminine in RC’s Short Stories; one chapter will be on the influence of the real women in his life…would love to chat, Maryann, if you read this, my email is michaelhemmingson@yahoo.com.

Carolyn Kellogg’s post is pertinent. I checked with several people in New York, including Gary Fisketjon (Ray’s last editor, who is quoted in the New Yorker article) and was told that David Remnick, the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, wrote the article. But it seems likely that William Stull, who edited the proposed book of stories with Tess Gallagher’s cooperation, provided the template for this unsigned piece.

The first person to write about Lish’s editing of Carver was not, by the way, D.T. Max, but Carol Polsgrove in her book IT AIN’T PRETTY FOLKS, BUT DIDN’T WE HAVE FUN? ESQUIRE IN THE SIXTIES. After that a scholar and novelist named Brian Evensen did further research and he in turn was followed by Dan Max, who wrote about the issue in THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE in 1998.

The whole story of Carver’s life is complicated, as Kellogg points out, and I’m trying to get all of that into my book. It takes time and care.

My point in all this is that Ray was this careful. Very careful in terms of how he weighed every word, every comma! He would go through multiple drafts until he reached the perfection he demanded from himself. Sometimes he put stories in the drawer and left them several weeks until he could look at them with a fresh eye. He was an excellent self-editor, having learned the procedure when he was a student of John Gardner’s. Then he taught me, so I could edit his stories the way Gardner had. Then, in Palo Alto, Ray worked as a professional editor and further honed his editorial skills.

Later, rumor has it, he went through twenty-nine drafts of “Errand,” his last story, before he called it good. Very good, indeed.
Maryann