SOURCE: A review of Waiting for Cordelia, in Washington Post Book World, May 22, 1977, p. 4.

In the following mixed review, Bernays asserts that while Gold exhibits some of his considerable talents in Waiting for Cordelia, ultimately, the novel fails to deliver.

There are few writers around as much admired by other writers as Herbert Gold. Which only intensifies the disappointment with [Waiting for Cordelia], his tenth novel. For, despite a feeling for the bizarrely comic and a masterly hold on the English language, Gold fails to deliver. The protagonist here is Cordelia, a whore with a classic case of heart-of-gold (no pun on my part intended.) The “voice” is that of Al Dooley, self-styled “snotty but intense sociologist.” The setting is San Francisco, top to bottom.

Written with a relentless cool, fired by an urgency to be culturally with-it, Gold's book—while undeniably brilliant in short takes—doesn't do...