SOURCE: "Lish's Narrator is a Many-Layered Thing," in Los Angeles Times, September 20, 1993, p. E3.

In the following mixed review of Zimzum, Harris describes Lish's writing as solipsistic and lacking substance.

By now, we know we have to take Gordon Lish as he is. We know he isn't going to wriggle out of the pupa of his established personality and suddenly flap his wings as a writer of taste, moderation, balance and moral acuity—an E. M. Forster, say.

No, the Lish we've encountered before, as a bad-boy editor at Esquire and Knopf, as a controversial teacher of writing and as the author of provocative fictions (Dear Mr. Capote, Peru, My Romance), is the same Lish we get here.

Zimzum—no telling what the title means—is a typical Lish novel, short and crowded. The crowding isn't due to the number of characters and incidents. There is only one...