Gold, Herbert, 1924-

American novelist & essayist.

From the description of Herbert Gold papers, 1951-1981. (Columbia University In the City of New York). WorldCat record id: 470399985

American novelist, essayist, and editor.

From the description of Papers of Herbert Gold, ca. 1959. (University of Virginia). WorldCat record id: 34567158

American author.

From the description of Letters, 1969-1979, to Robie Macauley [manuscript]. (University of Virginia). WorldCat record id: 647814493

Biographical Information

Herbert (Herb) Gold was born on March 9, 1924 in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Lakewood, a suburb. After graduating high school, Gold served a brief stint in the military then spent a year hitchhiking around the country, taking odd jobs, and writing poems. His parents wanted him to stay in Cleveland and attend college there and then go on to medical school. Instead, he was accepted at Columbia College in New York and studied philosophy. While in New York, Gold fell in with the upcoming Beat Generation and got to know many of the writers who would give the generation its name (including poet Allen Ginsberg, with whom he maintained an on-again, off-again friendship for decades).

Upon winning a Fulbright Scholarship, Gold moved to Paris with his first wife, Edith Zubrin, attending the University of Paris, where he finished his first novel ( Birth of a Hero, published in 1951) that launched his literary career. Gold's marriage to Zubrin ended in divorce (they had two daughters, Ann and Judith). To pay child support Gold became, as he called it, "the writing factory" and wrote regularly for Playboy and its imitators - not always using his real name.

Gold moved around for some time, living in Haiti, Detroit, and hitchhiking around America. His experiences in Haiti (he returned numerous times throughout his career) was to have a profound and lasting impact resulting in works of fiction ( Slave Trade ), non-fiction ( Best Nightmare on Earth ), and numerous essays and articles.

By the mid 1960s, Gold finally settled in San Francisco in time to chronicle the cultural and social upheaval of that era and the city that was a nexus of the counter-culture. Becoming an important fixture in the Bay Area literary scene, Gold's reportage of San Francisco, the mores and manners of its cultural life written with a mixture of love and biting irony, was published in works of fiction and in articles for the press and magazines. In the late 1980s, he wrote a weekly series, Travels in San Francisco, articles about various aspects of the city's life and denizens for the San Francisco Chronicle .

He met his second wife, Melissa Dilworth, just around the time Fathers : A Novel in Form of a Memoir (1966), his most successful novel, was published. He had a daughter and twin boys with Dilworth though this marriage also ended in divorce.

Although Gold has always been continuously linked to bohemian society, given his association with the Beat poets and authors, his Jewish heritage has been another deep abiding concern and influenced his writing as a whole, that of being an "outsider" looking in on a dominant Christian-American society.

From the guide to the Herbert Gold papers, 1942-2011, bulk 1960-1995, (The Bancroft Library)

BIOGHIST REQUIRED Jewish-American novelist Herbert Gold was born in Cleveland, Ohio on March 9th, 1924. Gold is the first of five children; his father, Samuel Gold, was a Russian immigrant who struggled to adjust to his life in America. Gold is well known for his novels, short stories, and literary articles, but during his early career he also studied and taught philosophy.

BIOGHIST REQUIRED Herbert Gold began writing in elementary school, and later he wrote for the school newspaper at Lakewood High School. Shortly after high school, Gold attended Columbia University to study philosophy, but his education was interrupted from 1942-1946 when he served in the United States Army. After graduating from Columbia in 1946, Gold traveled to Paris to continue his study of philosophy on a Fulbright scholarship; it was during this time that Gold completed his first novel, Birth of a Hero. Gold returned to Cleveland in 1951 to teach philosophy at the Western Reserve University until 1953.

BIOGHIST REQUIRED In addition to over 20 novels, Gold has published numerous short stories and articles that have appeared in both popular and literary magazines. His autobiography, My Last Two Thousand Years, was published in 1972. Gold wrote about his country, his Jewish heritage, and the beat movement; common themes in his work include American identity, power, money, and sex. His works were both praised and ridiculed. Herbert Gold traveled a lot, and lived in Haiti, Detroit, Ohio, and New York. He eventually settled down in San Francisco, where he currently resides. Gold was married twice, and is a father of 5, and a grandfather of 6.

From the guide to the Herbert Gold Papers, 1951-1984., (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

Herbert Gold was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1924. A novelist, short story writer, and essayist, his writings have frequently focused on themes related to Jewish life in America. His book, "My Last Two Thousand Years" (1972), is autobiographical in nature.

During the 1971-1972 school year, Gold was a visiting professor at Ohio University. His essay, "A Season at Middle-America U" in May 1972 Atlantic Monthly, discusses his time spent here.

From the guide to the Herbert Gold papers, 1969-1972, (Ohio University)