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Swiftie the Magician;: A novel
EXTRA RARE,VINTAGE,VERY GOOD CONDITION
168 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
About the author
Herbert Gold
125 books34 followersSan Francisco literary icon Herbert Gold was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1924. After several of his poems were accepted by literary magazines as a teenager, he studied philosophy at Columbia University, where he befriended writers who would define the Beat Generation, from Anaïs Nin to Allen Ginsberg. Gold won a Fulbright fellowship and moved to Paris, where he did graduate studies at the Sorbonne and worked on his first novel Birth of a Hero, published in 1951.
Gold wrote more than thirty books, including the bestsellers Fathers and The Man Who Was Not With It and received many awards, including the Sherwood Anderson Award for Fiction, the Commonwealth Club Gold Medal, and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award. He also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, and at Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard.
Gold returned to writing poetry in the last years of his life, creating the book Father Verses Sons, A Correspondence in Poems with his sons, filmmaker Ari Gold and musician Ethan Gold, which was finalized in the weeks before his death, and is now being published by Rare Bird Lit. He also acted in a companion film, Brother Verses Brother coming in late 2024.
Gold wrote more than thirty books, including the bestsellers Fathers and The Man Who Was Not With It and received many awards, including the Sherwood Anderson Award for Fiction, the Commonwealth Club Gold Medal, and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award. He also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, and at Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard.
Gold returned to writing poetry in the last years of his life, creating the book Father Verses Sons, A Correspondence in Poems with his sons, filmmaker Ari Gold and musician Ethan Gold, which was finalized in the weeks before his death, and is now being published by Rare Bird Lit. He also acted in a companion film, Brother Verses Brother coming in late 2024.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 24, 2018
Buried Gold
Can you believe the stuff that gets BURIED?! [!]
All editions: 2.33 average rating, 3 ratings, 1 review, added by 7 people, 3 to-reads
The correct cover of the edition I read isn't even shown in the GR database. It's the same illustration as the German edition: a faux-Roy Lichtenstein image of a woman's head.
Living in the Sixties
I first read this novel in 1980, but have no clear recollection of it. I can't remember what motivated me to read it, but this time it was Thomas Pynchon's mention of Herbert Gold's influence on his writing.
The novel was written and published in 1974/1975, and is pretty focussed on living in America in the 1960’s (mainly the early, Kennedy years before the Summer of Love). It’s narrated by Frank Curtis, a hyphenate - film and television producer-writer-director - who originally came from Cleveland to New York to work in television, before moving to Los Angeles to pursue opportunities for movies of the week, and a personal film project about the Sixties called “Imperial Days” (“my Fellini move, my Antonioni sweep”).
Imperial Days
Apart from this abbreviated plot summary, Frank’s decade was split between three women in particular - Kathy, Karen and the Swiftie of the title (who is a fashion designer who was close to Jackie Kennedy and the world of Camelot, which is to be the subject of the film project).
Frank pitches the project orally to a studio boss, who suggests he spend some time and money on a treatment (which he’s prepared to fund).
The studio boss is sceptical that it is really any more than nostalgia for a decade which, at the time, hadn’t even come to an end yet. It needs substantive characters who can be played by name actors:
The Treatment
Although it’s not expressly stated in the novel, it’s quite possible that the novel itself is Frank’s attempt to work out a draft treatment that tells the story of his own life in the Sixties. So, not only is it about a whole decade, but, in Frank’s words, while thinking of Karen:
The Zeitgeist of the Decade
In a way, the narrative extends broadly over a decade, but it doesn’t purport to do so with any thoroughness or precision. Years go by in the course of a paragraph.
The novel captures its milieu pretty effectively. It’s an accurate snapshot of society and the Zeitgeist, without being trapped in the time or becoming dated. The most interesting and entertaining aspects are the character sketches of Frank and his three paramours.
Roy Lichtenstein - "Finger Pointing"
Frank Curtis
Frank starts off 30 and ends up 40.
He’s a Jew, “swarthy, but nice,” a “sulky Greenwich Village lad” in pursuit of “money and fun, if not love and power”:
Kathy
When the novel opens, Frank has just started a relationship with Kathy who “was one of those innocent scholars - wellborn, pretty, and quite lost in Manhattan":
Karen
Karen is one of the “cute teenie-tinies” Frank hooks up with in L.A., who were “so generous and ticklish and willing to try anything”:
Karen wants to be “an actress or a model or something.” She’s a “shy, sweet, silent girl, lanky and pink, with [a] sweet smile of self-possession…”
She's not quite Lolita, though ten years into the novel, Karen is terrified of turning 25.
Swiftie
Swiftie is Karen’s best friend in Manhattan. She is intelligent, but has “a bony dark ugly face, all scaffolding, in that chic smart New York style…”
Frank is obsessed by Swiftie, but isn’t attracted to her:
He scorns her “scrawny aging speedy body.” (Though she seems to be the same age as Frank.)
Nevertheless, Frank views Swiftie as a mirror in which he can identify or verify his own life and times:
As caricatured as these characters are, they seem incredibly familiar. I can’t work out whether it’s because of the hangers on around the Trump presidency or the revelations by the #MeToo movement.
SOUNDTRACK:
Can you believe the stuff that gets BURIED?! [!]
All editions: 2.33 average rating, 3 ratings, 1 review, added by 7 people, 3 to-reads
The correct cover of the edition I read isn't even shown in the GR database. It's the same illustration as the German edition: a faux-Roy Lichtenstein image of a woman's head.
Living in the Sixties
I first read this novel in 1980, but have no clear recollection of it. I can't remember what motivated me to read it, but this time it was Thomas Pynchon's mention of Herbert Gold's influence on his writing.
The novel was written and published in 1974/1975, and is pretty focussed on living in America in the 1960’s (mainly the early, Kennedy years before the Summer of Love). It’s narrated by Frank Curtis, a hyphenate - film and television producer-writer-director - who originally came from Cleveland to New York to work in television, before moving to Los Angeles to pursue opportunities for movies of the week, and a personal film project about the Sixties called “Imperial Days” (“my Fellini move, my Antonioni sweep”).
Imperial Days
Apart from this abbreviated plot summary, Frank’s decade was split between three women in particular - Kathy, Karen and the Swiftie of the title (who is a fashion designer who was close to Jackie Kennedy and the world of Camelot, which is to be the subject of the film project).
Frank pitches the project orally to a studio boss, who suggests he spend some time and money on a treatment (which he’s prepared to fund).
The studio boss is sceptical that it is really any more than nostalgia for a decade which, at the time, hadn’t even come to an end yet. It needs substantive characters who can be played by name actors:
“Send me a star or a director, send me a big novel, a property - not a whole decade, Frank! - and we’ll talk. You’re a capable kid. You know what you’re doing. And yet you walk in here with nothing but a decade under your arm.”
The Treatment
Although it’s not expressly stated in the novel, it’s quite possible that the novel itself is Frank’s attempt to work out a draft treatment that tells the story of his own life in the Sixties. So, not only is it about a whole decade, but, in Frank’s words, while thinking of Karen:
“Her history only goes back to the trailer park, mine to Swiftie, Camelot, the immediate past, my ‘Imperial Days’. I’m nostalgic for the past, the immediate past, my ‘Imperial Days’.
“Imperial Days - the nostalgia satire of those early Sixties which would fix the image of Camelot for all time - Jack and Jackie and Swiftie, the Twist and the Bay of Pigs, Andy Warhol and Swinging Everytown. I didn’t want to do the beautiful people, but how it touched all America.”
The Zeitgeist of the Decade
In a way, the narrative extends broadly over a decade, but it doesn’t purport to do so with any thoroughness or precision. Years go by in the course of a paragraph.
The novel captures its milieu pretty effectively. It’s an accurate snapshot of society and the Zeitgeist, without being trapped in the time or becoming dated. The most interesting and entertaining aspects are the character sketches of Frank and his three paramours.
Roy Lichtenstein - "Finger Pointing"
Frank Curtis
Frank starts off 30 and ends up 40.
He’s a Jew, “swarthy, but nice,” a “sulky Greenwich Village lad” in pursuit of “money and fun, if not love and power”:
“Other men my age are adults. I’m this paltry metaphysician, which is another way of saying a self-involved permanent boy.
“What I sense behind the dramatic melancholy of my life, with which I regale my friends, is that I’m really pretty depressed. That’s different from what I tell. I’m sad. I’m disappointed. I still have hopes. My bruised hopes keep me from settling comfortably into despair. For some reason it seems worse that way - perhaps because the trouble is all mine and of my own making.”
“I had always known this was part of my nature, to be smug and cool and superior and frightened out of my head by weakness…”
“I was known as the rare happy man, and I was miserable about it. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in California bliss.”
Kathy
When the novel opens, Frank has just started a relationship with Kathy who “was one of those innocent scholars - wellborn, pretty, and quite lost in Manhattan":
“Love and beauty were mysteries, that was part of what had brought me to this city, and the skillful, discreet orgasm of a well-behaved beautiful girl was a mystery I had never anticipated, it was something very strange. It was strange without tricks. There was no fakery. She cared about me, even if she needed Swiftie to frame our life…”
Karen
Karen is one of the “cute teenie-tinies” Frank hooks up with in L.A., who were “so generous and ticklish and willing to try anything”:
“I wanted to give juice and flesh to some hope of life in me, and therefore squeezed the firm meat of the teeny-tinies…”
Karen wants to be “an actress or a model or something.” She’s a “shy, sweet, silent girl, lanky and pink, with [a] sweet smile of self-possession…”
She's not quite Lolita, though ten years into the novel, Karen is terrified of turning 25.
Swiftie
Swiftie is Karen’s best friend in Manhattan. She is intelligent, but has “a bony dark ugly face, all scaffolding, in that chic smart New York style…”
Frank is obsessed by Swiftie, but isn’t attracted to her:
“Camelot and Swiftie promised a new career for America - taste, glamour, fun...Not that Swiftie was sexy or funny for me.”
He scorns her “scrawny aging speedy body.” (Though she seems to be the same age as Frank.)
“Since the decade of pop needed tyrannical clowns, she would put her claws, her screech, her burning eyes to work in a face contorted with expression that said nothing.”
Nevertheless, Frank views Swiftie as a mirror in which he can identify or verify his own life and times:
“It was the decade which unleashed sex and fun in me and many solemn young men out for the free ride, so how could I do other than pay attention to those who helped by breaking all the rules?
“I was an elder statesman of the single swingers...I thought of myself as a contemplative man despite my life…I had no one to whom to tell my truth - that I missed the grief I should feel about my own childishness. I thought Swiftie could understand, if she would listen, if I could tell her, but I knew she would not listen and I would not tell her...I was giving up on words except as a way to make jokes about words.”
As caricatured as these characters are, they seem incredibly familiar. I can’t work out whether it’s because of the hangers on around the Trump presidency or the revelations by the #MeToo movement.
SOUNDTRACK:
Displaying 1 of 1 review