Tuesday, February 21: Working with Authors
Gordon Lish introduced to Ray Carter in Palo Alto through Curt Johnson (date unavailable):
“I’m stuck here on California Street with a guy who’s too drunk to get home and his car won’t start. I rode my bicycle over there. That was how I met Carver.”
To say the least, the bromance between Ray Carver and Gordon Lish may have started with those first impressions. The Lorentzen interview with Lish doesn’t go into detail of any verbal exchange between his future writer and the editor himself. It was noted that Carver at the time was a textbook editor for Science Research Associates, which may account for a diverse background between Carver and Lish on editing style. According to Wikipedia, Science Research Associates published “large boxes filled with color-coded cardboard sheets, and each sheet included a reading exercise for students.” Those were for primary and secondary grade levels in “mathematics, science and social studies.”
Clearly, Carver knew a great deal about how to portray an author struggling with alcoholism but zero in what was expected from him when it came to the socially complicated topic of substance abuse. This was not emphasized in the 2007 New Yorker article “Rough Crossings” by Simon Armitage.