Arcade, or, How to write a novel

Gordon Lish

A novel fails if everything is not annihilated by the writing of it. But what if the best the writer can do is get no better than himself bumped off? Could this be what they mean by plot? What's to be said of a novel produced to bring into being the assassin of the novelist? Mightn't the payoff, if anyone were to pay attention in earnest, come to account for a footnote in Lit 101? Lish's Arcade pleads to be read as the old college try for immortality at the university level. Apart from this, this book is empty, the pursuit of a blank, a smug admission of flawed booklessness.