Obituary
The Editors mourn the loss of Herbert Gold (1924–2023), one of our longest published writers. From 1951 to 2019, his work— short stories, literary criticism, book reviews, memoirs, letters from abroad—appeared in twenty-three issues of the magazine. He appeared via video at our 75th Anniversary celebration last May and told about his first acceptance, the celebrated short story “The Heart of the Artichoke,” written with a fountain pen by the Spanish Steps in Rome. The story, he said, became the “germ of one of my bestselling novels, Fathers.” His final contribution was a memoir titled “Oatmeal Raisin Cookies and the Jewish Problem” about growing up in Lakewood, Ohio.
San Francisco and the life there, along with romantic entanglements, remained the grist for his mill. During the nineteen fifties, he lived in Haiti and continued to visit there producing both fiction and reportage about the country’s turbulent times, both of which we were fortunate to publish. Best of all, he remained in frequent contact by occasional visits and telephone calls. At age ninety-nine, he said, “The Hudson Review became my home base, and still is.”