Herbert Gold

Gold was born in Cleveland, Ohio in a Russian Jewish family, and raised in Lakewood, a community he was later to memorialize in his first book, Birth of a Hero, published in 1951 by Viking Press. He moved to New York City at age 17 after several of his poems had been accepted by New York literary magazines. While there, he studied philosophy at Columbia University and became involved with the burgeoning Beat Generation, which resulted in a lifelong friendship with writer Allen Ginsberg.

Gold won a Fulbright Scholarship and moved to Paris, where he finished his first novel. After that, he moved around as he wrote, traveling to Haiti and Detroit, and hitchhiking all over the United States. He married Edith Zubrin and had two daughters with her, Ann Gold (b. 1950) and Judith Gold (b. 1952). They later divorced, and he finally settled in San Francisco, where he became an important fixture in the literary scene.

In 1958 Gold taught English literature at Cornell University, as Vladimir Nabokov's temporary successor.

Genesis West (Vol. 6), was published in the Winter of 1964 with an interview of Herbert Gold by Gordon Lish.

Gold was married to Melissa Dilworth and had three children with her: daughter Nina Gold and twin boys Ari Gold and Ethan. After they divorced, she became involved with concert promoter Bill Graham, and died with Graham in a helicopter crash in 1991.

He is a father of five (Ann, Judith, Nina, Ari, and Ethan), and a grandfather of six (Sarah, Sasha, and David Buscho, children of Ann; Sonia and Nora Heidenreich, daughters of Judith; and Ella, daughter of Nina).

• Birth of a Hero (1951)
• The Prospect Before Us (published in paperback as Room Clerk) (1954)
• The Man Who Was Not with It (1956) ISBN 0-912697-69-5
• The Optimist (1959)
• Therefore Be Bold (1960)
• Love and Like (1960) (short stories)
• The Age of Happy Problems (1962) (essays)
• Salt (1963)
• Fathers: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir (1967) ISBN 0-87795-550-6
• The Great American Jackpot (1969)
• The Magic Will (1973) (short stories)
• The Young Prince and the Magic Cone (1973) ISBN 0-385-01519-4
• My Last Two Thousand Years (1972) (autobiography) ISBN 0-09-116910-0
• Swiftie the Magician (1974)
• Waiting for Cordelia (1977)
• Slave Trade (1979)
• He/She (1980) ISBN 0-87795-264-7
• Family (1981)
• A Walk on the West Side (1981) (short stories and essays)
• True Love (1982)
• Mister White Eyes (1984)
• A Girl of Forty (1986)
• Bohemia (1994) ISBN 0-671-76781-X
• She Took My Arm As if She Loved Me (1977) ISBN 0-312-15653-7
• Haiti - Best Nightmare on Earth (2001) ISBN 0-7658-0733-5
• Still Alive!: A Temporary Condition (A Memoir)(2008) ISBN 1-55970-870-0
• When a Psychopath Falls in Love (2015) ISBN 978-0988412279

• Works by or about Herbert Gold in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Biographical article on Gold at the Wayback Machine (archived January 17, 2006)
• Herbert Gold in News from the Republic of Letters:
  • Bewitched, Bothered and Begoogled: Nos. 14/15
  • The Tragedy You Can Dance To: No. 13
• Finding Aid to the Herbert Gold Papers, 1942-2011, The Bancroft Library
• Herbert Gold at Library of Congress Authorities, with 46 catalog records