Review by Booklist Review
Gold defines bohemia as a fluid state of mind that can flourish in a variety of locales and that has done so, vigorously, for decades. With wit and finesse, he tracks the evolution of bohemianism from beatniks to hippies and punks, from pot smokers to ingesters of smart drugs, from threadbare hipsters to well-heeled "upper bohemians." This irreverent and effervescent tour of bohemia describes its basic philosophies, appetites, and achievements, as well as certain flamboyant habitues. By weaving in tales from his own happily bohemian life, Gold has concocted a heady mix of memoir, history, and travel writing. He begins his survey on his home turf in San Francisco, then wends his anecdotal way to bohemian outposts as far flung as Tel Aviv; Palma, Spain; the two Venices; Nevada; and Miami's South Beach. Gold tells stories about the famous and the flaky and observes and celebrates the bohemian penchant for "taking frivolity seriously" and accepting the ridiculous with the profound. He ponders bohemian fashion and sexual mores, the devotion to art and the art of hanging out. A tangy and freewheeling tribute to "la vie de boheme." ~--Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this idiosyncratic, meandering memoir, Gold ( Travels in San Francisco ) recounts his experiences in bohemias ranging from his adopted hometown, San Francisco, to New York City, Jerusalem and Paris. Gold offers anecdotes, not an anatomy, and his book is thin as a guide to such places as Greenwich Village and the Left Bank. Most noteworthy are those experiences involving literary figures: as a college freshman in 1943, Gold attended a party held by poets in New York and was nearly seduced by Anais Nin; in Paris some 15 years later, he looked on as novelist William Burroughs used a sink as a urinal. Gold is no romantic: in 1991, while he was visiting his three college-age children on Manhattan's Lower East Side, a stabbing nearby reminded him that their new bohemia ``is not one of pure gaiety and charm.'' Describing bohemia as ``an autonomous zone,'' he concludes that ``the world seems to need this moral ventilation system.'' (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Gold, who won the 1989 Sherwood Anderson prize for fiction, explores the concept of bohemia as he wanders through bohemian quarters from North Beach to Greenwich Village, from Paris to Budapest to Tel Aviv. He reports conversations with James Baldwin and Allen Ginsberg and describes the antics of a host of lesser-known noncomformists--all marching to the beat of a different drum. There are some amusing anecdotes here, such as Gold's accounts of meeting with Anais Nin and William Burroughs. On the whole, however, Gold somehow manages to make bohemianism dull. His ruminations, better suited for a notebook or travel journal, fail to make an interesting and coherent book.-- William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Novelist/essayist and professional bohemian Gold (Travels in San Francisco, 1989, etc.) surveys the past three or four decades of his wandering years. It's hard to know whom Gold has in mind as readers for this trip through the echoes of the Beat generation in San Francisco, the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village, the Left Bank and Montmartre, Haiti, Israel, Morocco, and like places where the penniless robe themselves in the dignity of their art. His water- spider prose skims over faces and cafes so swiftly that few register for longer than the glimpse allowed. Gold writes well, paragraph by paragraph, but repeats himself chapter by chapter until once lively statements, quotations, or metaphors get weather- beaten and the mind frazzles with the suspicion that he has nothing to say but is saying it brilliantly. Like a be-bopper working scales, Gold pads and jazzes every page with flurries of notes without feeling and with so little melody or anecdote that the storytelling seems only ten percent, the excelsior ninety. The appeal here is to homecoming--once more having our knee felt up by Jean Genet as he asks, ``Do you masturbate?''; having Gregory Corso reach for a cafe check he has no intention of paying; having William Burroughs prepare a salad while pulling together the first pages of Naked Lunch; having Katherine Ross borrow the car and return it months later with a glove compartment full of unpaid parking tickets; and, in former Clevelander Gold's chosen home of San Francisco, visiting once again the City Lights Bookstore, Vesuvio's, North Beach, the Mission District, the Haight, and the alley named after Jack Kerouac. But it all reads as if recycled from magazine and Sunday newspaper space-fillers that Gold enjoyed writing for his expenses and now can't bear to render up to darkness unwrapped in hard covers. Two cheers for chat, one for content.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
