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.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
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
Review
Charming. (Booklist )
Altogether exhilarating. (The Los Angeles Times ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Altogether exhilarating. (The Los Angeles Times ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
hilarious and wise,
By BookBuy "Bookbuy" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Still Alive: A Temporary Condition (Hardcover)
This very funny and very wise book by Herbert Gold is a return to form for him, and a reminder of why his storytelling has been so popular for decades. Gold is one of the last true bohemians, and his having the wit to be baffled by his own survival makes this a very entertaining read.
Aside from the great stories that he tells in this book, however, there is something new and deep from him--a wisdom about growing older, and about watching friends disappear. Whether it's in his story about Saul Bellow, or about the other friends who've either lost their liveliness--or their lives--Gold manages to be hilarious before you realize you've been powerfully moved by what you've read. A great read for everyone, I can't recommend this highly enough.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Out of Gold, a Life-Affirming Gem,
By
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This review is from: Still Alive: A Temporary Condition (Hardcover)
Less a memoir than a series of essays on what it means to face aging gracefully, this wonderful book is more a self-portrait in the pointillist style. Gold has filtered out what isn't essential, has only included the facts of his life that are pertinent. It's invigorating to read how he spends his time now, always open to possibility, but unwilling to compromise. It is also a love story of intense power for his still beloved former wife, although they had been apart for over a decade before her death in 1991. His respect for that remarkable woman shine forth on every page.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"OLDGUY" EXISTENTIALIST REMEMBERS THE SEVENTIES, THE FORTIES, AND CHILDHOOD,
This review is from: Still Alive: A Temporary Condition (Hardcover)
Herbert Gold tells the reader he prefers the moniker "oldguy," even if it isn't a word -- in contrast to, say, "senior citizen."
His writing is distinguished for its clarity and concision, a Hemingway-esque prose that has been carefully edited, seemingly, by both Samuel Beckett and Bernard Malamud -- a clever stylistic compression of Yiddish warmth and Kierkegaardian starkness. Because of his astute handling of language and the lack of labor involved in comprehending his sentences (other than paying attention to the words), I was able to withstand the onslaught of so many personal reminiscences that are to be encountered within the pages of this book: memories of himself and his first wife and their friends in the early Seventies in San Francisco (Chapter 1); being out in the City at 3 a.m. during the period of Hippy Power (Chapter 2); an early friendship with a guy before World War II hit (Chapter 3); a tense friendship with a man he hated while he lived in Haiti and the memory of an old Norwegian captain who lost his wife through death (Chapter 5). There is a memory of his childhood (Chapter 4); there are encounters with old fogies and old fools with romantic impulses (Chapter 6: "Adolescence Can Strike At Any Age"). I think a few of these memories would have been enough, as this is not supposed to be a memoir so much as it's supposed to be, according to the author, a book on aging. But is it, really? There's a reminiscence about his only remaining friend from "wartime U.S. Army" (Chapter 9); there's a description of an encounter with another male friend from the Seventies (again): Chapter 10. There's a story and reminiscence of the famous Nobel Prize author, Saul Bellow, Chapter 12. Where's the book on aging? It's to be found officially in Chapter 11, the title chapter, "Still Alive," where he reflects directly on growing older and being alone. But he also concerns himself directly with the subject in a chapter called "Ghosts" (Chapter 8) where he meditates on old age and death. To be fair, aging, as a theme, can roughly be found throughout all of the chapters if only by way of the power and strength of the aging author's reminiscences as an "oldguy" from Lakewood, Ohio (during the 1930s) and a veteran of World War II. Mr. Gold is of my father's generation, and his memories are powerfully formed by his youth and the war he fought as a youth, as my own father's were. It's wonderful to find that nothing but nothing betrays the author's age or shows signs of his growing old within the pages of his book -- for the most part -- because the writing style is completely contemporary and his stories are told in an arhythmical flat and existential manner, much like how one experiences modern life today. This, I say, is substantially true throughout the book, except that the author's memories are totally focused beyond the last 30 years (with the small and momentary exception of his mentioning some event between Saul Bellow and himself in 1999). It's as if nothing in the last thirty years of life has been worth writing about, and as if a wall has been erected between his status as an "oldguy" and his youth, a wall that seems to coincide with the sad death of his second wife. (There's no mention of anything beyond Vietnam. No "Reagan Years" can be found here; no "age of greed" discussions; there is nothing about what happened with the dot.com boom, no mention of Clinton nor how the Internet has changed American culture. It's as if all these people and events never existed.) The author has (grown) children and does mention them. They help him to live in their own unique ways today, but he presents no chapter-shaped or even paragraph-shaped reminisces of them. His memories are nostalgic, though he is extremely good at leaching out self-pity and sentimentality. I found a great deal in this book I respected. I respect his natural ability to deal with insomnia and I respect his ability to live, rather than merely endure, a late night alone (again and again) even in his "late life" (his words), just as he did in his youth. I respect that he has confronted his ghosts, his self-pity, his aloneness, his skepticism about God and about life. I respect his ability to "nail" a character with a phrase and I respect his deep sense of irony which has not made him morose or cynical at all. I felt trapped, however, by so many reminiscences when what I wanted was to see, hear and feel the aging process he directly promised the book to be about. The book is excellently written; every page is a writing gem --as far as writing goes. His stylistic prowess shows no signs of age or wear. But when I came to the "Afterward" and there was -- still more of this directly personal (to him) rehashing of memories and age, a tear came to my eye, not because of the emotion he evoked but because of the exhaustion I felt. I needed a rest from what began to feel like "incessant nattering." All in all, this is a lovely book, gorgeously written, but I'd skip the "Afterward." It's just too much. How much is too much? It's a matter of personal taste. I like a tell-all book on a need-to-know basis. Personally, I didn't need to know so much.
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