SOURCE: "'What We Write About When We Write About Gordon Lish'," in The New American Writing: Essays on American Literature Since 1970, edited by Graham Clarke, Vision Press, 1990, pp. 123-38.

In the following excerpt, Seabrook examines Lish's work in the context of minimalist fiction and discusses the unconventional narrative techniques utilized in What I Know So Far.

In its Fall and Winter issues of 1988 the Michigan Quarterly Review published 'A Symposium on Contemporary American Fiction': solicited contributions from more than seventy authors on their preferences in current American writing. Many opted for brief, breathy endorsements, sometimes of each other; a few writers, inured to interrogation, declined to name names. Strewn through these responses is the general rant on the subject of minimalist writing, and when the name of Gordon Lish is finally invoked it is to make the rant more specific and also to specify why he has not...