"Peru" by Gordon Lish

an older review of one fine novel

In real life I see and hear the same Gordon Lish frantic in his telling, then his calming down for a spell, and then reviving enough again to raise the bar yet another level to his sometimes manic excitement. He does this as a grown man on the streets of New York City.

Peru by Gordon Lish; Hardcover, First Edition, 222 pages; Published 1986 by Dutton

wool·gath·er intr.v. wool·gath·ered, wool·gath·er·ing, wool·gath·ers: To engage in fanciful daydreaming.

...Steven Adinoff was just woolgathering and then caught himself at it...

Was the boy Gordon killed, Steven Adinoff, just dreaming when he got it?

In the very first paragraph Gordon Lish tells us every character he intends on showing us. The boy he killed in the sandbox Steven Adinoff, Gordon's neighbor Andy Lieblich and his nanny, the "colored" man, and Gordon's elementary school teacher Miss Donnelly. From that paragraph on Lish circles these subjects as if he were a raging-mad Comanche, deftly and finally putting his object where all of us can see it squarely in the sandbox. Early on it is known that all three boys, Steven, Andy, and Gordon, were only six years old. The rest of the characters are adults who generally are in charge of keeping children safe and teaching kids to be good playmates and to get along. We get some rather vague idea that the toy rake Steven Adinoff was using had its tines stuck in Gordon's head, which may have had something or other to do with Steven Adinoff ending up dead. The Gordon Lish I personally know is not the Lish who wrote this book or even the character in it. Lish originally wrote this novel in 1986 which numbers out to a good nine years before I met him. But I had been sending him manuscripts since 1987 and reading everything in his oeuvre to date. Much has changed with me and with Gordon since I first read Peru in the original E.P. Dutton version. For both, we have a history now and we are quite a bit older. Then there was a Sceptre edition published in Great Britain in 1987 followed in 1997 by the Four Walls, Eight Windows edition of Peru. Changes were made to all four editions of this book. It has been my personal experience with Gordon that he often changes the text throughout all of his books in the normal course of one of his gracious attempts to inscribe his name on the title page.

The Gordon on the page is in love with Andy Lieblich. He is also obsessed with the entire family. All of them. From the nanny to the "colored" man washing and waxing the Buick. Gordon wanted the life Andy Lieblich had.

...The kind of boy I wanted to be would be a boy who could not keep any fried foods down or miss his nap or not get his bath in a bathtub or even have to get a sandwich off the kitchen counter and not be served his meat pattie when it was high time for lunch or for him to have to have his milk without the chill off...

In real life I see and hear the same Gordon Lish frantic in his telling, then his calming down for a spell, and then reviving enough again to raise the bar yet another level to his sometimes manic excitement. He does this as a grown man on the streets of New York City. Gordon Lish is an amazing performance actor, on the stage or on the page, it does not matter. His words are up and down just as the rake was and then the hoe.

Today, during my daily reading period, I came across a line or two from a Thomas Bernhard novella Walking. It was a timely piece seeing that I would complete my reading of this Dalkey Archive version of Peru shortly thereafter. "...looking in the immediate proximity reveals nothing but incompetence. One should, in every case, go back over everything, says Oehler, even if it is in the depths of the past and scarcely ascertainable and discernible any longer." This is what Gordon Lish means to do. He has mental agility enough to carry this out to the nth degree. I have read a bit of Proust, nothing complete, but there is nobody for me like Lish to make me remember my childhood so vividly. Even the terrible violence that erupts on the page here, the gist of the story is the revisiting amidst immense feelings of one’s childhood and all the nuances we miss in the daily events of our adult lives. Lish, however, can make you feel somewhat icky in his accounting of a childhood murder staged in a sandbox.

There are so many ways of seeing things. First the TV news report opening the novel and then a memory from forty-four years ago. Not to mention the cab later as an adult and getting hurt again enough he has to go to the hospital to have the wound closed. And the cab driver being a "colored" man just as the gardener was while in the employ of the Lieblich family so many years ago. Gordon, the character in the book, wanted to kiss both of these "colored" men.

...Listen to this — I wanted to kiss Kobbe Koffi...

What about the shower and Gordon's hairy dad? Gordon once told me years ago that this book Peru was his one homoerotic novel. I never really got it until now. I wasn't skilled enough back then in paying attention to all the details.

...Knew that that was what I was always thinking when I was lying there in the water soaking, knew that I was always thinking that I am doing this for him, that I am lying here in this bathtub for him to come home to me and find me, that I am waiting for my father to come home to me and come up the stairs to me and come see me and find me — see not his son but me, his lady-in-waiting waiting for him — clean...

The fact is we are all waiting. In Gordon's case he was a lady-in-waiting ready for whatever happens next. Because it will. Things happen and the truth is we like to watch. In this case it is the view taken from being on our backside. And still we seem to be delusional about our very own dying. But the Lish Dalkey Archive introduction to Peru alone is worth the price of admission. Granted, Lish is an acquired taste, but this novel is definitely worth reading for any doubters out there still reading. The emphasis for Lish is always on his choice of words, and the exquisite language that follows is a given when reading any work written by Gordon Lish.

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