Gordon Lish - Teaching and Influence

Teaching and Influence

For three years in the early 1960s, Lish taught as an English teacher at Mills High School, Millbrae, California. His high school teaching career ended when school administrators declined to give him tenure. Donovan Bess, writing in The Nation Magazine, wrote that "essentially, Lish is accused: of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag too speedily (time: 8.7 seconds); of “teaching on Cloud Seven” (two clouds too high); of flouting the system by, for example; making the kids give the answers’ of being “a screwball”; of wearing a hat indoors; of founding a “beatnik” literary magazine, called Genesis West; of using the word “shit” in a short story; of being unpredictable and moody-looking; of sponsoring avant-garde student poetry (at Mills, poetry that does not rhyme is avant-garde)”. Several students and adults testified on his behalf at the hearing. The full story is detailed in “The Man Who Taught Too Well" By Donovan Bess, The Nation Magazine, June 15, 1963, pages 507-516.

In addition to his career in literary publishing, Lish has conducted writing seminars in New York City and served as a lecturer at Yale University, New York University and Columbia University.

Don DeLillo acknowledged Lish's influence as a teacher and friend in dedicating his book Mao II to Lish. Lish dedicated his books My Romance, Mourner at the Door and Epigraph to Don DeLillo. Lish also wrote an afterword to the publication of Don DeLillo's first play, The Engineer of Moonlight, in which he attacks those who would call DeLillo's vision bleak. "Where we are and where we are going is where DeLillo is. He is our least nostalgic writer of large importance."

He is an honorary doctor of letters from State University of New York awarded in 1994. He retired from teaching fiction writing in 1997 but came out of retirement to teach during the summers of 2009 and 2010 at the Center for Fiction in Manhattan.

David Leavitt's novel Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing documents the narrator's experiences under the tutelage of Gordon Lish. In the novel, Lish is the basis for the character of Stanley Flint, an enigmatic writing teacher. T. Gertler's novel, Elbowing the Seducer, has a character who is a book editor and womanizer who is apparently based on Lish. In Barry Hannah's short novel, Ray, there is a character called Captain Gordon who is based on Lish, and Lish appears as himself in Hannah's Boomerang.