SOURCE: “Herbert Gold and Company: American Jewish Writers as Universal Writers,” in Studies in American Jewish Literature, Vol. 10, No. 2, Fall, 1991, pp. 133–34.

In the following essay, Walden discusses Gold's role as an American Jewish writer.

Herbert Gold, who is a prolific and honored author, who has been a published author for some three decades, moved from Cleveland to New York to be in the center of this country's culture, to “find a way out of Cleveland.” In finding himself, however, he hoped to appeal to his readers “in their bodies and needs, where lusts and ideals were murkily nurtured together, calling to the prime fears and joys directly, rising with them from the truths of innocence into the truths of experiences.” And yet in some ways he is still “an American from Lakewood, Ohio.” What that means is that he has a strong sense of historical rootedness, while his...