Books by Herbert Gold
NOVELS
THE BIRTH OF A HERO
THE PROSPECT BEFORE US
THE M A N W H O WAS NOT WITH IT
THE OPTIMIST
FIRST
PERSON
SINGULAR
THEREFORE BE BOLD
ESSAYS FOR THE SIXTIES
SALT
SHORT STORIES
LOVE AND LIKE
FICTION OF THE FIFTIES
(Editor)
EDITED AND
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
HERBERT GOLD
ESSAYS
THE AGE OF HAPPY PROBLEMS
FIRST PERSON SINGULAR:
Essays for the Sixties (Editor)
THE DIAL PRESS, NEW YORK, 1963
Table of Contents
Hardwick, Elizabeth: "The Life and Death of Caryl Chessman" reprinted
from A VIEW OF MY OWN by Elizabeth Hardwick by permission of
Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, Inc. Copyright © 1960, 1962 by Elizabeth
Hardwick.
Krim, Seymour: "The Insanity Bit" reprinted from VIEWS OF A
NEARSIGHTED CANNONEER copyright © 1961 by Seymour Krim.
By permission of the author.
McCarthy, Mary: "America the Beautiful: The Humanist in the Bathtub"
reprinted from ON THE CONTRARY by permission of the author.
Copyright © 1961 by Mary McCarthy.
Miller, Arthur: "The Bored and the Violent" reprinted from Harper's
Magazine, November 1962. Copyright © 1962 by Arthur Miller.
Miller, Warren: "Poor Columbus" copyright
Reprinted from THE NOBLE SAVAGE 3.
1961 by Warren Miller.
Saroyan, William: "The Debt" and "The Time" reprinted from HERE
COMES THERE GOES YOU KNOW WHO by William Saroyan. Copyright © 1961 by William Saroyan and used with the permission of Trident
Press.
Styron, William: "Mrs. Aadland's Little Girl, Beverly" reprinted by permission of the author. The essay first appeared in Esquire.
Swados, Harvey: "The Pilot as Precursor" reprinted from A RADICAL'S
AMERICA. Copyright © 1961 by Harvey Swados. Used with the permission of Little, Brown and Co.—Atlantic Monthly Press.
Vidal, Gore: "Barry Goldwater: A Chat" reprinted from ROCKING
THE BOAT by Gore Vidal. Copyright © 1961 by Gore Vidal. Used with
the permission of Little, Brown and Co.
Introduction:
How Else Can a Novelist Say It?
Nelson Algren:
Down with All Hands
James Baldwin:
Fifth Avenue Uptown: A Letter from Harlem
East River Downtown: Postscript to A Letter
from Harlem
Saul Bellow:
Literary Notes on Khrushchev
Herbert Blau:
The Public Art of Crisis in the Suburbs of Hell
George P. Elliott:
Why Are They Driving Me Crazy?
Herbert Gold:
Death in Miami Beach
Paul Goodman:
The Devolution of Democracy
101
Elizabeth Hardwick:
The Life and Death of Caryl Chessman
127
Seymour Krim:
The Insanity Bit
INTRODUCTION
How Else Can a Novelist Say It?
140
Mary McCarthy:
America the Beautiful: The Humanist in the Bathtub 160
Arthur Miller:
The Bored and the Violent
173
Warren Miller:
Poor Columbus
185
William Saroyan:
The Debt
The Time
198
203
William Styron:
Mrs. Aadland's Little Girl, Beverly
209
Harvey Swados:
The Pilot as Precursor
217
Gore Vidal:
Barry Goldwater: A Chat
Notes on Contributors
232
251
AT IS NOT quite a revolutionary turn in behavior for the
novelist to take pen in hand and heart in mouth in order to
issue a direct communique from the battlefield of his life,
without the intermediaries of invented character and story.
The novelist, in the grand and nonspecialized tradition, has
often been as much writer as novelist. Dostoevsky filled a
newspaper column with his tics, fulminations, speculations,
passions; Balzac, Stendhal, and Dickens sometimes preached
their sermons directly to audiences; Tolstoy, who is a better
model of the literary saint than Flaubert, consecrated a large
part of his life to analysis and comment, the point of which
might be summarized with the title of one of his books,
What Can a Man Do? In fact, the limiting of the novelist's
attack to the cautious secreting of masterpieces—like the
silkworm in its cocoon—is a phenomenon of special times
and schools. There were specific causes for this rule. There
are compelling reasons for breaking it now.
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