The Man Who Was Not With It (Second Edition Books) [Paperback]

Herbert Gold (Author)

Book Description

Series: Second Edition Books | Publication Date: October 1, 1987

This is the odyssey of young Bud Williams into a strange and prophetically disjointed subsurface world of con men, addicts, carnival operators, freaks and bruised innocence.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Herbert Gold was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Lakewood, a community he was later to memorialize in his first book, Birth of a Hero, published in 1951. 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 finally settled in San Francisco, where he became an important fixture in the literary scene. 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). Selected works Birth of a Hero (1951) The Prospect Before Us (1954) The Man Who Was Not with It (1956) The Optimist (1959) Fathers: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir (1967) He/She (1980) Bohemia (1994) Haiti - Best Nightmare on Earth (2001)

Product Details

• Paperback: 314 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 2 edition (October 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0912697695
• ISBN-13: 978-0912697697
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,661,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Herbert Gold Remembered, May 22, 2010

By 

Thomas Dunn "Thom Dunn" (Cincinnati, OH, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The man who was not with it (Hardcover)

I will always associate Herb Gold with Wayne State for his essay, "A Dog in Brooklyn, A Girl in Detroit, a Life Among the Humanities". The Man Who Was Not With It reads a lot like Saul Bellow's Herzog or Stanley Elkin's A Bad Man. A fictional biography of an ordinary Jewish urban man in midlife, his loves, his work, his failures, his small measures of success. No great triumps and no great arc to the narrative; a display, rather, of humanity just trying to get a little and get along. THIS IS HOW I REMEMBER IT, but decades have passed since I read Gold's book, and I am quite ready to be set straight if I have mischaracterized it.