Herbert Gold

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Gold, Herbert (1924–), born in Cleveland, after army service in World War II received an A.B. and M.A. from Columbia, and taught at Midwestern and California universities. He lived in France and Haiti and later moved to San Francisco. His novels are Birth of a Hero (1951), about a conventional, middle‐aged man who learns to discover himself; The Prospect Before Us (1954); The Man Who Was Not with It (1956), a vivid tale, raffish and poetic in jargon and attitude, about a carnival barker who is a dope addict; The Optimist (1959), a portrait of a man bent on success and wanting to be wanted; Therefore Be Bold (1960), an amusing tale of Jewish adolescents in the Midwest; Salt (1963), depicting with wit and satire the massive metropolitan anonymity of New York City and the lives of three people, each telling one part of a romance in which all are involved; Fathers (1967), “a novel in the form of a memoir,” dealing with Gold's father and his own experiences as a father; The Great American Jackpot (1969), a wry view of contemporary U.S. seen by a black college professor and a white student; Swiftie the Magician (1974), depicting a writer‐producer‐director in the 1960s; Waiting for Cordelia (1977), a comic view of prostitution; He/She (1980), presenting an unusual marriage; Family (1981), a saga of an immigrant Jewish family in the U.S.; True Love (1982); Mister White Eyes (1984), his 15th novel, about a U.S. journalist often abroad; and Dreaming (1988). Story collections include Love and Like (1960), The Magic Will (1971), Stories of Misbegotten Love (1985), Lovers and Cohorts (1986), and Travels in San Francisco (1990). Essays are printed in The Age of Happy Problems (1962), and both essays and stories in A Walk on the West Side (1981), about California. My Last Two Thousand Years (1972) is an autobiography of himself as a Jew.