INTERVIEW
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On the Road Again with Herbert Gold | |
| Kerouac's classic turns 50, and we talk to one of the Beats who knew and hated him | ||
 by Steven Lee Beeber, August 2, 2007
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TAGS:
Fifty years ago today, Jack Kerouac published On the Road, a drug and jazz-fueled novel chronicling what came to be known as the Rucksack Revolution. In artistic terms, of course, it inspired the Beat movement, whose resonances (coffeehouses, Greenwich Village, Ethan Hawke) are still very much with us. Fortunately, some of the old Beats are, too.
Throughout his career, Herbert Gold has taken a slightly different road by defending tradition while promoting rebellion. He believes in family, literacy, and moral decency, but also free love, midnight tokes, and madman writing binges. Like Whitman, Gold contradicts himself and contains multitudes: he's the missing link between your grandparents’ dry-goods store and your painter uncle's third floor walk-up on Delancey Street.
As one of the first Jews to bypass Columbia University's notorious quota system, Gold befriended that other Beat icon Allen Ginsberg, who introduced him to Kerouac, then a young football recruit. Ginsberg wanted his new friends to hit it off, but as Gold recalls, Keruoac dismissed him almost immediately as a "smart kike." Gold earned a reputation for calling Kerouac out on his anti-Semitic and increasingly right-wing attitudes, and he was one of the first critics to lament Ginsberg's later work, which he felt was unbecoming of the poet's early, more focused promise.
As a critic, Gold would also spot the unmistakably Jewish resonance of the wild new style of 50's storytelling, practically writing the stage entrance for Norman Mailer: "The hipster-writer is a perennially perverse bar mitzvah boy, proudly announcing, 'Today I am a madman. Now give me the fountain pen.'"
Gold's own moment of fortune and fame came with the publication of his fourth novel, Fathers, which explores the relationship between his early bohemianism and his immigrant father's life in America. Part hipster diatribe, part coming-of-age autobiography, it became a bestseller and for a while made Gold a household name.
Now, at 83, Gold is as candid as ever. From Cleveland and New York to San Francisco and Haiti, he's kept his rucksack at the ready, remembering his Pentateuch and youthful madness while frantically waving his pen in the air.
Angel-headed hipster: Miles DavisON BEING NORMAN MAILER'S WHITE NEGRO (SORT OF):
Well, I describe myself as an old beatnik. I live less elegantly than my kids do. That's kind of my style—the sort of postwar graduate-student style. But I always liked a lot of stuff about the Beat period and the Beat people. I enjoyed the sexual freedom. I wasn't interested in being gay or bisexual, but I enjoyed the sense that you knew you could go ahead and do it. I didn't take a lot of drugs, but I was happy to smoke a joint now and then. I liked the music. You know, this sounds like a white guy talking about how he likes Miles Davis.
ON BREAKING THE COLOR LINE AT HARPER'S:
My first published story was plucked out of the slush pile at Harper's Bazaar. At that period, they didn't publish people like me. The editor, Mary Louise Aswell, asked me to change my name. I was a student at Columbia at the time, and you know what a thrill to get a story in a national magazine! She suggested that I add a u—that I call myself Herbert Gould, which didn't sound so explicitly Jewish. You know, there are Goulds who are not actually Jewish. Anyway, I agreed to do that because I was young and ambitious. But I came back to my dorm at Columbia feeling incredibly guilty and horrible. I called her the next morning and said I wanted my real name used. And she said, "We don't publish Jewish names in Harper's Bazaar." It wasn't her prejudice; it was company policy. But she was sympathetic with me and said OK. And the story was published in Harper's Bazaar under my real name, in the Christmas issue, which had 400 pages. But it was left out of the table of contents.
The obligatory visionary artist cigarette photo: GinsbergON DRINKING, FUCKING, AND DYING WITH ALLEN GINSBERG:
Once, at a restaurant in Paris, I saw Allen take out and play this funny little instrument. He sang this Buddhist country-rock song that went, "Eat when you eat, drink when you drink, fuck when you fuck, die when you die." There was something comical about his take on life. In fact, I think parts of his poetry that people take seriously are meant as comedy. Of course, he was also very much in earnest about his love life and about his various passions. When Sonny Barger, who was head of the Hell's Angels, sent a telegram to Nixon offering the services of the Angels as guerillas in Vietnam, Allen said he was gonna organize—and this is the phrase he used; I want to quote it exactly—“a disciplined corps of trained fairies to unzip the flies of the Hell’s Angels and blow them into peacefulness.” Well, it was very funny. And at the same time, there was a certain element of seriousness because he thought that if the Hell’s Angels only got good sex, they would relax—it was that kind of humor, what the carnies called “kidding on the square.”
ON TACKLING THE BEAT GENERATION'S DUMB JOCK:
I knew Kerouac through Ginsberg at Columbia when I was a student. When I first saw him, he was just a jock. He was given a football scholarship to Columbia. I don't remember how I first met him, but I know that Allen kept wanting me to be friends with him. Allen was like a mother hen; he wanted all his friends to be friends and he was trying to make us a Kerouac clique. He and I argued about only three things: We argued about his sexuality (not that I objected to his being gay, it was just that he wanted to convert me at that time); we argued about Saint Theresa, whom he followed; and we argued about Kerouac. Kerouac was a creep from the beginning, but I think his antisemitism didn't come out then because he was self-serving. He accepted all the help from Allen that he could. And he and Allen were briefly lovers. Poor guy died at, what was it, 47 or 48, and he was an old man when he died. And his becoming antisemitic developed along with his obesity and his alcoholism and his general falling apart, along with his becoming a right-winger. Remember, he supported the war in Vietnam. And he supported Nixon. I think his mind was pretty much gone.
On the road...to anti-semitism! (Sorry): KerouacON BECOMING A CHOSEN (AKA NICE JEWISH) WRITER:
The ethical standing of being Jewish appeals to me. I think Jews have something special to give. I do accept the idea, not that we're chosen by God to be wonderful, but that Jews have a mission to do certain things which are of virtue in the world and of help in the world. I think it comes down to the fact that heaven is very weak in the Jewish tradition. What happens when we die is we're buried and then when the Messiah comes we all come back to life. But we have to make it on Earth as it is; that's where our work should be done and where we're to enjoy life and where we're to make our memories and experience. It's one of the reasons so many Jews—all over the world but particularly in America—have become novelists. Because what the word novel means is new; a novel is news of the world. And we've had this traditional need to see the world as it is, and to do good for the world.
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Anonymous
Great piece
I really enjoyed this. I bet it came from a longer manuscript & wish you'd post that too.
Steven Lee Beeber
thanks
...and yes, you're right about the longer manuscript. If Jewcy can't post it, perhaps I'll do so on my website (www.jewpunk.com). It would be on my blog, now in the design stage, "Blogga Blogga Hey."
thanks again,
sb
Lucky the Wonderduck
Kidding on the square
Great piece.
It's unfortunate that it's the 50'th anniversary of On the Road, because it means people will probably go out and buy themselves a copy. But thankfully, as soon as they actually start reading it, they'll realize what a boring, overrated, misogynistic piece of crap it is, and hopefully see what a douchebag Kerouac was for writing it. So wait. Scratch that. Maybe it's good after all — the hemi-centennial thing. Happy 50th, On the Road!!
stacey.
familiar
It's funny. I read this article before I looked at who wrote it, and I immediately thought of your book, Steven. The bit about Gold "defending tradition while promoting rebellion" brought to mind Jonathan Richman's own Jewish "old world" background and his quest to "stay straight." Anyhow, great piece. I really enjoyed it, and I'm going to try to read some Gold when I get a chance.
Mahler
Kudos
Like the other commentators, I really enjoyed this and I'm looking forward to the longer version if and when it becomes available. I'm also looking forward to picking up a copy of your book while I'm stateside later this month.
Steven Lee Beeber
Sympathy for the Devil
Hey Lucky! You are one angry Duck! But you speak much truth. Kerouac was indeed a prize horse's ass in many ways. Jews, women, napalmed Vietnamese -- they all got a pretty rough ride from him. Still, I hate to admit this, but I have fond memories of reading "On the Road" in high school. The first page, where he's talking about wanting to meet people who never say a commonplace thing resonated DEEPLY with the suburban-trapped sidewalk-dweller in me. Even more, the roll of his language appealed to my hormonally caffeinated senses. And yet, you’re also right. It's the same issue that pops up with folks like Tommy Eliot, Fatso Hemingway and too many others to list here. I love their works, but I hate them as people; hell, I often don't even like what they say in their works, even if I do like how they say it. So I’ll close with this thought: Style is shallower than Substance, but it's still got its place. Let's give Jack his due for what he did accomplish, then drop him at the nearest exit for what he didn't. Yours, Dean
Steven Lee Beeber
The Wisdom of Stacey M
Hey Stacey,
Good point about the Richman/Kristal connection! Both were sort of transitional Old World/Modern World figures, even if Richman was the dorkier of the two and Kristal ultimately the rich man (baddle biddle biddle bum). It’s sort of a paradigm of the early punks in general. All those kids born after the Holocaust were raised in its shadow, yet ready to move on. They REALLY didn’t want to be associated with Germany, Poland, Hungary etc anymore – what were those but killing fields by then anyway? Still, even if they weren’t fully conscious of it at the time, they respected the substance of Jewish culture (cleverness before strength, social justice before might, comic books and diners before librettos and opera houses). If you’re around on Sunday, November 18, I’ll be in Ann Arbor appearing at the Jewish Book Festival there and will be very happy to hear more of your comments and sign your book. After all, promoting “Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s” by going on the road (clever, huh?) kind of sucks unless I see people who get what I’m saying. Also, kudos to you for planning to check out Gold’s work – it’s something every Jewcy should do (so that they shouldn’t feel guilty, you see.)
sb
Steven Lee Beeber
Reply to Mahler
Hey Gustav,
Your words are music to my ears! My blog is all but ready to go and, at your urging, I’ll probably make the Herbert Gold expanded remix the first post. Just go to jewpunk.com/blogga (as in “Blogga Blogga Hey”) in a day or so to check it out. … Oh, and if you want to do me a solid, before you pick up the book stateside, be sure to ask for it in your local Israeli bookstore. I’m not even sure my Zionist brothers have heard about it yet, and seeing as I talk about Israel quite a bit in “Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s,” I’d really like to know what they think.
Kudos back at ya!
sb
markcohen12
Another Jewish Beat
Hi Steve,
I liked your piece on Gold, and Gold's line about Jewish Beats. Another Jewish Beat you might be interested in is Seymour Krim. I just wrote an article about Krim called Missing a Beat that is at www.zeek.net.
Best,Mark
Steven Lee Beeber
What about Maynard G. Krebs?
Hey Mark,
Very interesting about Seymour Krim. I really enjoyed your article and am going to look into his writing. He sounds like a brave soul who faced the music even when others preferred to hum blandly inoffensive tunes.
You might be interested to check out my book on the Jewish origins of punk as I also talk about the connections between literary ambition and Jewish culture that were in place during the '60s and '70s in New York. For instance, almost every one of the major figures to create "rock writing" (that is, writing about and in the vein of rock, not today's diluted hack work called "rock criticism") were of the tribe.
Also, I have an article in the next issue of Zeek. It's about the rise of Jewish Hardcore.
all best,
s
markcohen12
Lit and rock
Steve,
I think I will take a look at your book. The role of Jews in rock seems related to that literary ambition you mention. An excellent guy to read on Jewish-American culture is Stephen Whitfield. His In Search of American Jewish Culture has a great essay on music and a few pages on rock, the Brill building, etc. He notes that the major Jews of rock (Dylan, Paul Simon, Carly Simon, Randy Newman, Carol King, Laura Nyro) were notable for their writerliness. Punk seems an exception. (Though the non-Jewish Talking Heads were very popular with us arty Jewish types when I was in college a long time ago)
Steven Lee Beeber
The Zayde of Punk
Mark,
While I absolutely agree that the singer-songwriter types you mention were writerly in what may well have been a Jewish way, I'm not sure I agree that punk was an exception. One of the most writerly rockers out there is Lou "Rabinowitz" Reed and he is generally considered to be a contender in the Godfather of Punk sweepstakes (I prefer to think of him as the Punk Zayde to Iggy Pop's godfather). Even more self-consciously literary was Richard "Meyers" Hell (half-Jewish) who wrote THE punk anthem ("Blank Generation") and modeled himself on Rimbaud (definitely not Jewish). Once you lump in the many Jewish rock writers who championed punk, including Sandy Pearlman, Richard Meltzer and Lenny "Kasikoff" Kaye (the last of whom later went on to create one of the most important embryonic punk groups with poet -- and for a while wannabe Jew -- Patti Smith), you realize just how much writing was essential to the NYC scene. Hell, even The Ramones were extremely clever in their lyrics, even if they did keep them simple. As no less a literary slouch than Ezra Pound (a notorious anti-Semite) once put it, "Less is more."
One other thing. It's funny that you should mention Whitfield's discussion about the Brill Building. I talk quite a bit in the book about both The Ramones' (half-Jewish) and Blondie's (founder Chris Stein) connection to the songwriters of that almost entirely Jewish hit factory -- just as I do about Ellie Greenwich, who worked with Blondie, and Richard Gottehrer ("I Want Candy") who produced both Blondie's and Richard Hell's first albums.
In other words, who knew the punks and Neil Sedaka had so much in common?
Keep the faith!
sb
Gavi_rina
I learn something new everyday (hurray)
Really fascinating interview, I'm going to go look at Gold's stuff (and yours too) when i get the chance.
Cheers
MJ
The worlds we see are the veils for eternity
Steven Lee Beeber
Extended Gold Interview
Hey MJ,
Thanks so much for your kind words. It's funny how once articles enter the ether of the internet they seem to become ghosts -- that is, until someone comes along and comments on them bringing them back to life.
I think you'll really enjoy Gold's stuff -- and I HOPE you enjoy mine.
Just so you know, in addition to my book about the Jewish origins of punk, my anthology about insomnia, "AWAKE! A Reader for the Sleepless" (Soft Skull Press) is being released this Dec 21, just in time not only for the holidays, but the Winter Solstice as well.
It's chock full of good stuff, including poetry (Charles Simic, Rebecca Wolff), fiction (Arthur Bradford, Aimee Bender, Joyce Carol Oates), probably-true fictions (Jonathan Ames' masturbation-solution to sleeplessness), comix (Howard Cruse, Shannon Wheeler, Frank Stack), even found items from Davy Rothbart of FOUND magazine, drawings from acclaimed artist Louise Bourgeois, and a pictorial insomnia diary from Cricket Suicide of the Suicide Girls.
Hope you enjoy. And thanks again for your comments.
Oh yeah, as promised in a much earlier post, I'm still planning on posting the entire Gold interview in the blog on my website www.jewpunk.com ("Blogga Blogga Hey" can be found on the WEB XTRAS page).
Gobble gobble hey,
sb
swade518
My Last...
Two Thousand Years by Gold, I've just finished. It was quick and dense.Covering H Gold's post ww2 global romping, as well as the early arc of his career.... well worth a look if you haven't already.
Steven Lee Beeber
Too Jewish?
Thanks for the tip about "My Last Two Thousand Years" by Herbert Gold. I'm not familiar with that one and would be especially interested to hear more about the early arc of his career. The little tidbit he offered in the interview -- about how Harpers asked him to change his name on his first published piece so that it didn't sound "so Jewish" -- bodes well for further revelations.
You might also enjoy Gold's novel "Fathers," which explores the often complicated dynamic between immigrant fathers and their "American" sons. Great stuff!
sb
Anonymous
His anti-Semitism aside
Kerouac is a god awful writer and his inclusion in the LOA series is a scandal. Isn't it interesting though that every fricking Jew hater has his Jewish friend? Ginzberg and Keruac a marriage made in hell. I hope they are sharing the same cell in No Exit eternity.
D from SD
This is an interesting
This is an interesting article. I like a few of the beats but most of their output is overrated trash (Howl wins the gold for this one)and by all accounts most of the people were reprehensible bastards. Kerouac was a bigoted jerk, Ginsburg supported pedophilia and treated people like shit, Burroughs shot his wife in a fucked up game of William Tell, DiPrima seems to be nuts etc etc...."Father of the Beats" Kennneh Rexroth even denied association with them, saying that "an entomologist is not a bug". But there are some genuine gems amidst it all.
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