THE MAGIC WILL

by Herbert Gold ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 25, 1971

Just as Fathers was a ""cross-fertilization of fiction and fact,"" so are these twenty plus short stories and essays, or really pieces, which glide in and out of places, incidents, or a random state of existence whether external or more internalized in the reflective asides. ""To live is a verb in transit to something else."" Magic and will are part of it, that is if they can be defined, and if so, they can be programmed by a computer. But then something as sharp as definition is not Mr. Gold's forte; one is uneasy with his easy formulations: love and death are the province of the novel, catastrophe and desire those of the shorter form. Particularly when a story here might deal with ""A Death on the East Side"" in which a friend's daughter has died quickly from a dirty needle while he is dying slowly, leukemia; or the love (or is that merely desire?) of a young man for ""The Older Woman."" Still there are catastrophes -- at an airfield in ""A Survival"" or the soldier killed in action (or is that death?) in ""A Selfish Story."" This is primarily to demonstrate the rather porous umbrella under which most of this takes place. Gold is always a pleasant writer but everything drifts as in the ""in transit"" above -- it is hard to take a purchase on what is being said or experienced whether it's the older Bohemia or the newer scene, Haiti (several stories) or Biafra which prompts the occasional sharper line -- Biafra ""strips the skin off those who knew her."" The effect is at best humane and gentle -- cf. the divorced father with his two little girls in ""A Sunday Kind of Love.

Pub Date: May 25, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION