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Herbert
Gold's Golden State
Interview
by Jeff Troiano

photo by Gene Anthony
Herbert Gold grew up
in Lakewood, Ohio, the son of hard-working immigrants. He discovered Bohemia
at a young age and followed its path from Cleveland to Paris to New York
to Port-au-Prince and to San Francisco, never allowing the trail to cool
for very long. He's been described as "a Cleveland writer, a Jewish
writer, a New York writer, a San Francisco writer, a Beat/hip writer, a
young writer, a middle-aged writer"and the description lengthens
as Gold continues to produce great writing.
His first novel, Birth of a Hero, appeared
51 years ago; his most recent novel, Daughter Mine, hit the presses just
two years back. His essays and reviews appear with regularity in major American
media. The voice has evolved, from an oral, flowing Beat prose in his early
writings, to a more straight-forward, immaculate story-telling style in
the new work. Yet what remains consistent is Gold's ability to compose sincere,
insightful, engaging, at times warm, at others humorous, prose.
Herbert Gold adopted San Francisco, his Bohemia
of preference, 42 years ago, and has integrated the beauty and energy of
this city into his writing. He discussed the evolution of his workand
shared some great storiesin a recent conversation from his perch in
Russian Hill.
Jeff
Troiano: Your first novel, Birth of a Hero, was published fifty-one years
ago. What do you remember most about that experience?
Herbert Gold: I
was just a kid, so it was a fantastic experience. I was a graduate student
in Paris, and I submitted my manuscript through the mail. I didn't have
an agent, and it was plucked out of the slush pile at Viking Press. The
best part about it was that it enabled me to proclaim, "I am a writer,"
but now I get a little nauseated when I try to read it. It was after Birth
of a Hero that I started to write what I really wanted to write.
Who
else was Viking publishing in those days?
Saul Bellow
was the inspiration for me to send it to Viking. They also published Graham
Green and John Steinbeck.
What
new influences began to affect your style?
I was young.
I felt free and confident, so I did what I wanted to do. Viking wanted
me to do what I had done with Birth of a Hero, but I went in a completely
different direction with the next book, Therefore Be Boldso naturally
Viking rejected it. Some years later, after publishing several other books,
I published Therefore Be Bold. Dial Press, my publisher at the time, asked,
"Have you got a book for us this year?" I said, "Well,
I have this old manuscript. Would you like to see it?" It was ultimately
published in several languages, and translated twice into German.
Which
of your works in particular won over the critics?
Birth of
a Hero defined me as a promising young writer. My picture appeared in
the women's magazines, looking cadaverous and poetic. But I think my third
novel, The Man Who Was Not With It, received favorable reviews and critical
acclaim, even from academia.
Critics
often pinpoint Fathers as your key work, the one that launched you as
literary success.
Fathers
had great appeal. It was a best seller. It was selected by a big book
club; it was translated all over the world; I was on television, and my
picture was in magazines.
Why
do you think that Fathers appealed more than the others?
You never
know exactly. I asked my editor at the time, "What happens? What
makes a book a best seller?" He said it's a matter of telling people
something they want to know. Fathers is a novel about the Jewish family,
about my father coming to America. I guess it was fairly early in the
interest in ethnic experience in America. A lot of the readers were Jews,
of course, but I also received many favorable notes from Slavs and Italians.
The letters would say, "You're describing my experience," even
though they came from another ethnic background. Another reason possibly
is, it's basically a true story. I think that appeals to readers.
You're
an Ohioan and a Jew, and your roots came through visibly in your early
works. Would you say that those themes still appear in your writing?
One theme
I see in my work, to the extent that I understand my work, is that of
the difficulty of marriage, which reflects my experience to some extent.
I've been married twice. Also, the theme of being an outsider is prevalent,
because in many ways I was an outsider while growing up in Lakewood, Ohio,
a small town outside of Cleveland.
In
which regard?
We were
just about the only Jewish family in Lakewood at that time. It was a very
difficult time for Jews in America. There was a lot of prejudice. My parents
were somewhat outsiders. Although my mother wasn't born here, she went
to high school in the United States. And though she was quite American,
she had a slight accent. My father, who owned a store then, had a distinct
accent. The other fathers carried briefcases and wore white shirts and
ties to work, but my father was a working man with a store. You know,
I think everybody in his own heart is an outsider, because in our heart
of hearts we're all alone. It's difficult to say why I write about that.
You deal with it whichever way you can. Some people deal with it by drinking;
some people deal with it by trying to make a lot of money; and others
deal with it by writing.
You've
mentioned that love plays an important role in your writing. You are often
careful to point out that "fiction is fiction." But do your
friends and family ever take you to task about some of your fictitious
characterizations?
I've written
about the problems of marriage and divorce, and I've been married and
divorced. It always irritates me when people assume that a book is directly
autobiographical. Of course there's an autobiographical element, but it's
still fiction.
Can
you identify a basic motivation for your writing?
Writing
is the way I master the world; it's my way of controlling things. If I
can't write, I feel I lose control of my life. I need to make sense of
the world, to make the world magic. Someone once said, "Life must
be a festival." I really want to make life a festival. One of the
ways I do that is by describing life as I see it, maybe with some humor.
I want life to be funnyor at least interesting.
Would
you say that you write solely to please yourself?
I would
think not. You don't write just for yourself, because you want to communicate.
It's an act of sharing with others, and you want to imagine the best possible
communication. That's how a story is different from a dream; a dream is
just for you. A story is for others; it's something to share.
Have
you altered your approach to writing?
I'm more
direct now than I used to be. I used to play with language more, but I
don't do that as much now. Maybe it's that I've stored up so much experience
that wordplay just gets in the way. I'm more interested in telling
the truth about experience than I am in amusing readers with plays on
words.
You've
been described as being extremely prolific. Would you say you're as prolific
as ever?
I describe
myself as "a blocked writer"; I deal with the blockage by writing
a lot, although I don't write as much as I used to. It's a drift from
being poetically inclined to being philosophically inclined. I look for
the meaning of a story before I start it. In the past, I would just want
to write a story quickly. I enjoyed writing like that.
Do
you find that you rewrite more now or did you rewrite more then?
I always
rewrote, and I still rewrite. I rewrite until I'm nauseous. If I look
at the page and I want to throw up, then I realize it's done.
How
long have you been in San Francisco?
Forty-two
years. Actually, I was here before that while in the Army, when I came
to San Francisco to write an article. I also came here to visit Allen
Ginsberg in 1957, which was kind of the peak of the Beat period.
How
did you first meet Allen Ginsberg? What did you think of Jack Kerouac's
work?
We met while
we were in college at Columbia. We became rather good friends, although
we disagreed violently about a few things. One, he was proselytizing for
homosexuality and I was straight. We'd sit at the West End bar near campus,
and he'd say things like, "How do you know if you don't try it?"
Then I'd say, "I know I don't want to know." We went back and
forth about that. We also disagreed about Jack Kerouac. I was not enthusiastic
about Kerouac, and Allen was basically in love with him. I was very tough
on On The Road in a review I wrote of the book for The Nation. I'd probably
be gentler now, but back then I simply resented Kerouac's personality,
his style, his drunken rambling, and his pushing. For a while I was loosely
aligned with the Beat writers, but that just wasn't my style. Later I
actually felt sorry for Kerouac. He went downhill really fast. I reviewed
Big Sur, one of his later books, very favorably, because it dealt in the
sadness of being worn out. And he was definitely worn out; Kerouac died
before he was fifty.
Did
the Beat energy of San Francisco affect your writing?
I was definitely
turned on by the energy. There were writers I liked here, like Michael
McClure. He was a charmer who still lives in the Bay Area; Allen Ginsberg
was here quite often, hanging out with other Beat poets; Richard Brautigan
was a friend of mine as well, until he got too drunk and too paranoid
to be anybody's friend. It was fun to see him at his place in the early
years. I remember he had a rusty Coke bottle top in a big frame on his
wall. He had given it the title "The Oldest Living Coke Bottle Top."
He used to call himself "The Gestetner Rabbi" because he used
to stand on street corners giving people his poems that he'd reproduced
by the Gestetner system, which was a form of mimeograph. I remember walking
with Allen down an alley in Chinatown, and he said, "Listen to that
sound." We realized it was the whirring of a mimeograph machine,
which is how we made copies before Xerox. He said, "Some Beat poet
is printing out his poetry."
It's
obvious that the whole North Beach literary scene has changed tremendously.
What's your assessment?
I'm afraid
if City Lights weren't there, there wouldn't be much left. City Lights
is still the philosophical center of a physically attractive neighborhood.
When I first moved here, North Beach was the equivalent of Manhattan's
West Villagetoday's equivalent would be the East Village in New
York. It was pretty much a fringe area, like what the Mission was until
the last few years. Today, if you were to look for a Beat-like scene in
San Francisco, you wouldn't find it in North Beach. You'd go to Valencia
Street in the Mission. You'd go to bookshops like Adobe Book Shop on 16th
Street or Abandoned Planet Bookstore on Valencia.
Which
was your first true San Francisco novel?
I'm going
to answer this question indirectly. When I was living in Paris, I was
inspired to write my first book, which was about Cleveland and Lakewood,
Ohio. When I came to San Francisco, the first thing I worked on was a
book about New York. Getting distance from the place really helped. I
started doing some journalism about San Francisco quite early, but it
took a while before it was appropriate, you might say, to write about
San Francisco. Fathers is about Jews coming to America, to New York, to
Cleveland, and to San Francisco. San Francisco seeped into my work gradually.
The first novel that took place entirely in San Francisco might have been
The Great American Jackpot, which is about the hippie experience.
You
wrote an incredible non-fiction book entitled Bohemia: Digging the Roots
of Cool in the early 1990s. When did you realize that a "Bohemia"
existed?
I wanted
to understand my country, you know, understand my land and the group of
people with whom I felt most comfortable. I noticed that whenever I traveled,
I always seemed to drift toward the Beat coffeehouses, the hippie bookstores,
the natural food placeswhat we now call "Bohemia." Even
as a child I hung out at a candy store where the odd people congregated.
The people I describe in the book are like that, true Bohemians. They're
outcasts, self-removed, doing different things than other people. They
don't worry about money. They're not worried about material displays.
They have another sense of the way things should be.
Any
words of wisdom for someone who might like to follow your path?
I always
ask young writers, "Are you certain you want to be a writer? If you're
absolutely sure, then do it." If you really want to write, writing
has to take precedence over everything else, except for taking care of
your loved ones. It has to be more important than any possession, more
important than fame. We hear about just a few writers who get famous,
but most of them don't. It's got to mean more than that.
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