Customer Reviews

Still Alive: A Temporary Condition

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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.

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.

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.

l have known the author Herb Gold for over 30 years, and have coffee with
him M-F, he used to be a real lefty,but age has mellowed him somewhat,but he
still is a terrible nag.
another Jewish Mother.

One doesn't survive three quarters of a century by hiding in their home. "Still Alive! A Temporary Condition" is Herbert Gold looking back on his long life and wondering where it all went to. With a Bohemian look at life and the changing times throughout the twentieth century and the dawning of the twenty-first, his imagination brings much cleverness and thought for readers to feast upon. "Still Alive!" is a fresh memoir from a man who is not so fresh, highly recommended.

I laughed, cried, and reflected on life and aging throughout the book. It is serious without being morose, funny without being flippant, and in the end you treasure Gold's ability to withstand whatever life has tossed to him, emerging ever the optimist. Inspiring.

STILL ALIVE
a temporary condition
Herbert Gold
Arcade Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-55970-870-8
$25.00
264 pages
Reviewer: Annie Slessman

Reading Still Alive, a temporary condition by Herbert Gold reminded me of having a conversation with a close friend. This friend is always one-step ahead of me in his thought process. My goal is to one day hold my own in a conversation with him.
Gold is brilliant in his ability to relate his life experiences with humor and tolerance.
Okay, maybe not always tolerant.

His reminiscing includes stories of his bohemian days in what he describes as the "Beat generation; love found and lost; his travels and a profiling of friends he has known then and now. Probably the most amusing and interesting part of this work deals with Gold's idea of growing old. As he states in Chapter 11 - Still Alive: But all in Good Time, Might Not Be - "For nine months I swam like a tiny fish in my mother, then was born and did my best to take over the lives of my parents. Firstborn son, I ruled. Later, I watched them fading, dying. In turn, I co-created my own little fish, five of them, and now they accompany me though the process of late living, future dying. I still feel like a fish swimming - not in my mother but free in an ocean. My eldest daughter tells me she doesn't like my living alone. I'm not alone! But much of my company is now invisible because only remembered." I defy anyone to describe life better. Gold writes, seemingly effortlessly, in a manner that few ever achieve. His words and images are eclectic, funny and thought provoking.

As a writer, I appreciated his answer to the question he now receives, "Hi, Herb! Still writing?" Gold writes, "Writers should get used to the idea that some people are under the well-intended illusion that tellers of stories resemble human beings. Writers can't serve thirty years and then earn release to play golf, wear a baseball cap, entertain themselves by negotiating shopping carts down the aisles of the local supermarket. A writer might rest, brood, stir uneasily, drink too much, chase persons of the same or the opposite sex, but he or she is always on the lookout for the next book. Waits. Doesn't retire. Writers might despair or suffer writer's block, usually loudly, but they don't decide to quit unless they are even more disturbed than they had to be in order to become writers in the first place."

If you are looking for a book that will make you laugh, make you say, "ahhh...I remember when," and one that will live on in your memory, this is your book.

Herbert Gold is iin love with words. Sometimes that transports the reader to that special place between gifted writer of insight and we who have boarded that train of thought. Sometimes it is just too many words, It's not consistent. I did not feel enveloped in that blanket of love that Gold wraps around himself, his past life and the people who lived it with him. I became impatient and annoyed.
Sometimes memoirs can be over memorialized. That's what this is.

I've read and admired 7-8 of Herb Gold's previous thirty books, and this is my favorite (so far!). It seems to have come from Gold's heart as directly as anything of his that I've read. He has led a remarkable life and known a number of famous people, and it is easy for the reader to fall into those reminiscences (I was particularly moved by his remembrance of Saul Bellow), but it is just as easy to fall into his encounters with the non-famous people in his life: street people, neighbors, friends, lovers, and Gold's own children. I particularly appreciated the salute to Herb's brother, who worked on his own Novel for 50 years -- fifty years! -- without completing it, and then died. And I was deeply touched by Gold's anguish over the death of his one true love, his second wife, Melissa, who left him for another man and was then tragically killed. It doesn't get any more real than that. The book shines with compassion and also with abundant humor, and Gold's love of words, sentences, a good story, and a good chuckle is evident on every page.