A virtual friend of mine on twitter, a fellow writer, recently asked me what was up with the jumpsuit Gordon Lish wore for a time. I answered that my response would merit more than just a mere tweet.
A virtual friend of mine on twitter, a fellow writer, recently asked me what was up with the jumpsuit Gordon Lish wore for a time. I answered that my response would merit more than just a mere tweet. My intention was to expound on something I actually knew little about. I wanted to speculate on his question and at least offer my views. Unfortunately there are no photographs available on this google machine to prove Lish ever wore such an outfit. But I, like others, did see him in it.
No doubt Lish is known to have worn a wide array of distinct costumes throughout his many years. When I first discovered him via The Quarterly Magazine back in 1987 he was generally pictured as a dashing fellow in a tailored suit and handsome fedora. I doubt he was similarly bedecked while working as a disc jockey well before becoming the fiction editor for Esquire from 1969-1977. Or at one time in his life I suppose he did wear rugged cowboy garb back when he claimed he herded cattle. But there are no photographs to be found to confirm his life as a cowhand either. But his favorite outfit, at least when I personally knew him from 1995 through 2017, was the expensive well-tailored stylish cargo pants with their many pockets, the safari-type long-sleeve shirt over his cotton-blended button-down insulated underwear, black military high-top boots, and a hat reminiscent of the Canadian Mounties, the leader of the Boy Scouts, or even Crocodile Dundee engaged in a perilous walkabout over the Australian Outback. Once, when Gordon, my wife Beverly, and I were roaming the streets of SOHO in New York City a carload of boys yelled a slur at him calling him Roy Rogers as we lazily ambled along a sidewalk dotted by otherworldly, but beautifully-freakish supermodels. So why for a time did Gordon slip into a lightweight full-length outfit maybe a bit more comfortable than wearing all that other gear?
In the opening pages of Gordon Lish’s first novel Dear Mr. Capote his narrator David, a serial killer who used a knife he named Paki to stab his victims, states that he is trying out voices. David claims he has already made eleven prior attempts at writing openings for this letter to Truman Capote after a failed effort at first addressing Norman Mailer. Of course, according to David, it was the fault of Norman Mailer that this first attempt failed. I suppose it had something or other due to Mailer’s lack of character. Or maybe because Mailer in the early 60’s also stabbed his wife Adele Morales with a penknife, nearly killing her. But this twelfth and final opening to his letter to Truman Capote is the one David finally kept. The point is Gordon Lish not only tried out voices he took a few stabs at his clothes too, costumes if you will, not to mention a bevy of other unmentionables if he were to one day actually spill his beans.
There is an article available in the archives of the Chicago Tribune that explains one person’s take on the matter. In the piece titled ADMIRED AND VILIFIED, WRITER-EDITOR GORDON LISH CAN BE COUNTED ON FOR WILD WORDS the staff writer John Blades writes that while interviewing Lish he explained that his jumpsuit "had been devised for me to get out all in one piece from places where I'm not supposed to be"--namely his noontime liaisons with a paramour while he was employed as an editor at Alfred Knopf, the imperial Manhattan publishing house. Because he had only a half-hour for lunch, the zippered jumpsuit was ideal for quick, efficient entrances and exits, he said, "if you get my meaning."
His meaning seemed plain enough to the dozen or so gathered in the cafe of the Evanston bookstore, though a few seemed baffled about its relevance, if not its propriety. But not to worry, advised Lish. "If this is indelicate, I apologize, but I see all the children have been removed." Then he resumed: "The woman I `visited' with--if I may be dainty--could somehow contrive to do something with her heels, not around my ankles but in the nether regions of my legs, so our unmentionables were in very intense contact."
I have encountered Gordon Lish in this full-body jumpsuit only a few times. I always supposed he wore the suit primarily in the summer when temperatures in New York City can be quite stifling. I did imagine that Lish wore no additional underthings to impede his getting in or getting out of this obviously clandestine-preferred wardrobe. I, of course, also surmised that his jumpsuit was best suited for his purported lunch liaisons which he claimed could be spontaneous and also hurriedly time-controlled due to his other pre arranged commitments. But the Tribune article squashed some of my speculative meanderings. According to the article, it seems he did wear the jumpsuit in any weather with multiple layers involved in keeping his slender frame comfortably toasty. And as for the truth about anything regarding Gordon Lish, one can really only guess. One thing I do know is that his artistic public life demanded that he always be either performing or composing. As in trying out things. And I am not surprised that he would endeavor almost anything for effect, as well as to insure he never publicly emanated even the slightest compromise. Gordon Lish was a unique original and religiously went to great lengths to make sure we all knew it.
Love this! More pieces of the puzzle.