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 by Viking Press. 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 has published more than twenty novels as well as countless short stories, essays, articles, and memoirs. His most successful novel is Fathers: A Novel in Form of a Memoir about a Ukrainian father and son dealing with immigrant life in America.
Besides Ginsberg, Gold also knew Kerouac from his days at Columbia University. In our interview with him at Tosca in San Francisco he told us he was no fan of Jack Kerouac: “I didn’t like him. I thought he was uh, well, I have a French friend who said: “il le bullshitter,” and anyway, that was my opinion of him then. And it caused some, some difficulty between Allen and me because Allen and he were friends.” However, Gold did give Kerouac a favorable review for his book, Big Sur.
