The Mad Habit

Beginning in 1995, M Sarki developed a friendly working relationship with the infamous NYC editor and teacher Gordon Lish. Much will come to be written and said by others about this eighty-three year old charismatic literary personality, especially when The End eventually claims him. Their twenty year collaboration together is cause for Sarki writing this memoir. His own personal search for answers regarding their intimate relationship being the driving force behind this endeavor. Woven between a human behavior study and lengthy, but relative, book review are the revelations of the author M Sarki and his long-time muse Beverly Lane. At its core THE MAD HABIT is a love story. But this celebration of the relationship's long accomplishment as collaborators-in-life also seeks to answer the many questions involved within the workings behind the couple's relationship with the author's teacher and friend Gordon Lish. Combining personal photographs with substantive quotes, this sometimes-memoir follows a seductive path of digression, completely saturating the text, and resulting in a bulging, unseemly artifact ripe with feeling. THE MAD HABIT is unique to any specific genre as it reads as both a journaled memoir and critical book review. Source material used includes correspondence relating to this project as well as photographs. Pertinent books read while composing this master work are also commented on. Due to Lish's own ghostwriting activities revealed to Sarki many years ago he naturally proceeded to believe that one of the novels on his shelf Lish may have written under the pseudonym Clifford Hagen. THE MAD HABIT is a probing and honest look into the author's personal relationship with Gordon Lish as well as a seamless re-reading of the Clifford Hagen novel SUNSHINE.