Excerpts from 52% of a letter sent by Gordon Lish to students of his writing class, which Harper's published and was sued for (Lish won the suit)

It is absolutely unacceptable to me that this term not prove to be our most heroic yet. Everything points to the gathering of amazements...It happens that a number of old-timers are (if only quondam) teachers of fiction writing now--by my quick count, Yannick Murphy, Peter Christopher, Mark Richard (newly confirmed pal of, ye gods, Jackie O.), Jennifer Allen, Ted Pejovich, Amy Hempel, and Diane Williams. Anyway, all the more reason why the source of their "anxiety of influence" must again redouble his efforts if he is to keep surpassing himself, a requirement, you have my word, he pledges himself to meet. Newcomers could not possibly know how arduous, how taxing an experience awaits them. Much is going to be asked of you--and altogether aptly, necessarily--for the profit that can come to you from these classes is great beyond measure....Because you are on the point of taking your place in an undertaking not anything like what you have ever before essayed--this you can depend on! It is, in the opinion of some, a kind of magnificence, this class--and it confers, many claim, a kind of magnificence upon those who have managed to make their way from start to finish. Swell....On this point, by the bye: no questions, not during the course of the class...Ditto, please understand, the making of observations. Please believe that your question will very likely be superannuated by statements I will, when the occasion properly calls for it, make. I have been teaching fiction writing for thirty years. I know how to do my job. I need no one's help doing it. Not to fret: You will have the chance to show off every inch of your knowing by virtue of the literary artifacts you will be creating from it. Learning, acquiring a new set of behaviors, is a monstrously challenging task: Everything must be made to abet its happening. Therefore: no questions, no interruptions. Sit. Listen. Do this as best you are able (you will, mark me, get better and better at it) and you will surely observe my doubling back and doubling back and, each time that I do so, my bringing greater and greater exposition and exactitude to everything that has already been said--so that I might heighten the force of your revelations and elevate them to more sophisticated (read "ironic") terms....as old-timers will tell you, the first hour or two often find me at the zenith of my inspiration and usefulness--as does the last hour....No snippets, no jibbie-jibbies left behind you, yes? Yes, yes, you may, of course, use the potty--but watch Gordon and ask yourself, does he?...And since, reduced to its simplest formulation, the goal of your labors should be to overtake Lish...Well the inference is yours to draw, yes?...Look, do as you must--but be willing to wonder, perhaps for the first time, what you really must....Okay, that's it and that's it--save for me to say please be thrilled for what you are about to do. It is a brave prospect, incommensurate with the ordinary acts of your life and potentially susceptible of raising up from you nothing less than the occult, the strange, the unprecedented, the unexampled, the fabulous--namely, a work of art, an artifact worthy of history's notice. Old-timers know that I will stop at nothing to manage this immense ambition. To be sure, I feel more robust than ever, having at last shipped off the novel I had been failing to wrestle into the harness these last cruel years. I am stronger for that accomplishment, all the stronger to lift you up and carry you over the top--if you will only let yourself be lifted and carried. Listen to me--whatever your life is, there can be an excellence in it, a garden of achievement that no jealous god can drive you out of and whose walkways, however narrow, can keep you safe and steady on your course for all the rest of your given days. Soon, then, and be well.
--GORDON

(from Harper's December 1990 issue)