Gordon Lish
Mourner at the Door
A new edition, revised by the author

"There has been no figure so centrally American avant-garde since Gertrude Stein.…" — Harold Brodkey

In Mourner at the Door, Gordon Lish reshapes the American short story. Originally published in 1988, this collection of 27 stories was greeted with critical controversy. Most of the stories are brief, told in the form of sketches, anecdotes, monologues, lists, and jokes. The subjects are not untypical--death, boyhood memories, neighbors, subway rides — but in Gordon Lish's hands they are transformed. Using deceptively simple language and with an unmatched ear for dialogue, Lish captures the details, the emotions that resonate, the memories that stick.

These stories are about the language — the repetition and the compulsion, the risk of revealing a crucial truth and the use of language that enables one to do so. Lish bridges the gap between experience and description — an experience in itself — and he does so in a way that is entirely Lish.

Originally appearing in Esquire, Bomb, and Story Quarterly, among other publications, the stories in Mourner at the Door show that fiction can do and be anything and that Gordon Lish is not just a writer, but a force.

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