Still Alive: A Temporary Condition - Hardcover

Gold, Herbert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559708700 ISBN 13: 9781559708708

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

ÒOld age is a shipwreck,Ó Charles de Gaulle once observed. Not so, says Herb Gold in this lively, often hilarious memoir of his first seven decades. He is clearly enjoying every moment to the fullest. This is a book about how time overtakes us, how reminiscence, loss, hope, pain, success, failureÑthe lifelong accumulation of dreams and realityÑcrowd about us with every passing day. Combining a fascinating selection of people, places, and key events from a long life into the alembic of his ever-fertile imagination, Gold has distilled gold from his uncanny ability to recall conversations, anecdotes, atmosphere, and telling detail. In this age of overheated memoirs, STILL ALIVE! will surely find its way to a grateful audience both young and young at heart.

About this title

About the Author

Herbert Gold was born and raised in Cleveland, but rose to national fame with his roman ^ clef Fathers. Both a longtime chronicler of and participant in the Beat movement, he lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

Known best for his novel Fathers (1991) and chronicler of the Beats in his adopted city of San Francisco, veteran writer Gold now confronts aging with warmth, humor, and a trace of angst. Once a peace demonstrator in Earth shoes, now eightyish, Gold wryly recalls the early 1970s pseudo-Edenic “democracy of flowerdom,” which includes fascistic prescriptions for freedom and reform. He is equally spiky when recounting a friend’s unexpected reunion with a long-lost love apparently unchanged over four decades: “Prostate surgeries and hysterectomies are not immediately visible at art gallery openings.” And after all, “we cannot be indicted for fraud, nor . . . sentenced to anything but sleepless dreaming for lying to ourselves.” Breezily charming, Gold captivates in this tour de force with witticisms on memories of time past, then switches gears and grows reflective, citing the deaths of friends and reciting their names in a roll call of mourning, noting, “I’ve learned to go to the movies and to hike alone; it’s harder to learn to laugh alone.” --Whitney Scott

Edition details

• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1559708700
• ISBN 13: 9781559708708
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250