Herb Gold, elder statesman of the Beat Generation, writes on

[Mark Kohut]

Gold took Nabokov's position at Cornell back when.

--- On Thu, 8/14/08, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: Herb Gold, elder statesman of the Beat Generation, writes on
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Thursday, August 14, 2008, 1:59 PM
> The Jewish Journal
> August 12, 2008
> Herb Gold, elder statesman of the Beat Generation, writes
> on
> By Tom Teicholz
> 
> "Still Alive! (A Temporary Condition)" by Herbert
> Gold (Arcade, $25).
> 
> 
> Herbert Gold, who at 84 is among the elder statesmen of the
> Beat
> Generation, has a new book out, his 28th, a memoir titled
> "Still
> Alive! (A Temporary Condition)."
> 
> It is not an autobiography so much as a series of
> recollections of
> encounters with people who have been part of his life --
> neighbors,
> friends, family, lovers.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Over the years, as "writer in residue," as Gold
> calls it, at several
> colleges he has known or befriended many other writers of
> note. At
> Cornell he taught and knew Richard Farina and Thomas
> Pynchon. At SUNY
> Binghamton he was a teaching colleague of a young Richard
> Price.
> Although he is no name-dropper, the list of writers Gold
> has known is
> as wide as it is varied. During our conversation, there
> were few names
> that came up that Gold did not have an anecdote about (and
> usually a
> good one).
> 
> [...]
> 
> http://www.jewishjournal.com/tommywood/article/herb_gold_elder_statesman_of_the_beat_generation_writes_on_20080812/
> 
>    "At the simplest level, it had to do with language.
>  We were
> encouraged from mnay directions--Kerouac and the Beat
> writers, the
> diction of Saul Bellow in The Adventures of Augie March,
> emerging
> voices like those of Herbert Gold and Philip Roth--to see
> how at least
> two very distinct kinds of English could be allowed in
> fiction to
> coexist.  Allowed!  It was actually OK to write like this! 
> Who knew?
> The effect was exciting, liberating, strongly positive.  It
> was not a
> case of either/or, but an expansion of possibilities."
> (SL, "Intro,"
> p. 7)
> 
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72330