Writing his ‘Next Life’
Atticus Lish’s debut novel, “Preparation for the Next Life,” was an underdog: published by small Tyrant Books, set in the un-loveliest corners of New York and focused on two characters rarely seen in American fiction. But Zou Lei, the tough Chinese immigrant, and Skinner, the rattled Iraq war veteran, have won hearts and awards, including the prestigious PEN/Faulkner. Lish, a former Marine, spoke by phone. The characters in “Preparation for the Next Life” are often excluded from our cultural narrative.
If you look at American mainstream movies, they will take people who would lead safe lives, and then use a contrived situation — an asteroid is going to hit — to put them in jeopardy. I like action, but this contrivance bothered me. I wanted to look at people where something dramatic really happens to them. I looked at the news.
Skinner is from a town outside of Pittsburgh. ... He’s not going to be an Ivy League student; he’s on the outside. He was just an ordinary soldier. And for Zou Lei, the same thing: She’s virtually a nonperson. She’s one of these people that slips through the cracks. For these characters, the stakes are very high just getting through the day.
They’re what I think a criminologist would call “high-risk people.” Take Zou Lei. I imagine her as someone who’s been smuggled into this country. For anyone, but particularly for a single young female, to attempt to cross the border of Mexico and the United States is incredibly perilous. I read a book on the subject, “Lines and Shadows” by the great Joseph Wambaugh. It’s a nonfiction account of how the coyotes, the people smugglers, have exploited and sexually assaulted the people they help take across the desert. Your father is the editor Gordon Lish. Were the writers he worked with — Raymond Car ver, Don DeLillo — part of your life when you were growing up?
The people Gordon knew in the literary world didn’t come to our house. My recollection is that we lived in a very private way; we rarely had anybody come over. But his world did enter the house in the form of books. There were a lot of books in the house when I was young; I would go to the library and read freely. I recall very vividly reading Barry Hannah’s great short novel “Ray.” But you took a while before deciding to jump on the writing horse.
I don’t think I wanted to do anything that was intellectual until I got older. You have too much energy, sometimes, to want to sit down with pen and paper. I had a lot of jobs you do with your hands. I helped remodel Albertsons, a Rite Aid or two, strip a floor, set up gondola shelving.
I had been studying martial arts in Boston. My instructor said if you’re interested in fighting, I needed to learn grappling. He had a connection to the Machados [ a jiu-jitsu academy] in Torrance. I trained with them for a week; I loved it. I went back to Boston, rented a truck, packed everything up and we moved out to L.A. We were in Torrance for about four years, then I wanted to finish college and I went back to the East Coast.