Peru

by Gordon Lish, Gordon Lish (Introduction)

Overview

Arguably Gordon Lish's masterpiece, Peru begins with its narrator announcing, "There is nothing which I will not tell you if I can think of it." Gradually, the story of a dark childhood secret—real or imagined—unfolds: in 1940, six-year-old Gordon murdered his harelipped rival, Steven Adinoff, in a Long Island sandbox . . . (unless he didn't). Peru's narrator weaves together strands of disconnected, mesmerizing trivia, resurrecting memories of the mundane suburban childhood that spawned a killing: the sense of tedium on an endless summer day; the squishy sounds of a hoe digging into flesh. Ambiguous, complex, inventive, and subversively comic, Peru is a compendium of unnerving observations about memory, violence, obsession, and the potential horror behind the facade of an ordinary life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564788351
Publisher:	Dalkey Archive Press
Publication date:	03/05/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	223 KB

About the Author

Gordon Lish is the author of Dear Mr. Capote, What I Know So Far, Mourner at the Door, Extravaganza, My Romance, Zimzum, and Epigraph. This body of work, together with his activities as a teacher and editor, have placed him at the forefront of American letters for more than twenty-five years.

Gordon Lish is the author of Dear Mr. Capote, What I Know So Far, Mourner at the Door, Extravaganza, My Romance, Zimzum, and Epigraph. This body of work, together with his activities as a teacher and editor, have placed him at the forefront of American letters for more than twenty-five years.

What People are Saying About This

Harold Bloom

Peru is an achievement, one that is profoundly American and yet representative of profound and widespread nostalgias. Here is emergent Lish, with a voice like no other.”

Don DeLillo

In Peru, our fascination springs from the terror of compulsive memory and from the novelist’s struggle to turn it into art. It is a struggle that Gordon Lish wins brilliantly.”

Editorial Reviews

The author of Dear Mr. Capote and What I Know So Far, Lish again delves into a psychotic mindthe 50ish narrator of this tale may or may not have committed a murder at the age of six. ``This is a haunting book, provoking fresh perceptions about language, memory and power,'' PW wrote. (October)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

“In Peru, our fascination springs from the terror of compulsive memory and from the novelist’s struggle to turn it into art. It is a struggle that Gordon Lish wins brilliantly.””

Don DeLillo

“Peru is an achievement, one that is profoundly American and yet representative of profound and widespread nostalgias. Here is emergent Lish, with a voice like no other.””

Harold Bloom

“Peru is simply the name Lish gives to the endlessly prolonged moment during which we human beings keep on staggering around, bleeding from the wounds we inflict on each other, understanding nothing of what is happening to us, thinking only of how to deliver the next blow.””

New Republic