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HORACE_GOLD
November 7, 2007
(Note: Horace Gold was the
founder and editor of Galaxy
magazine throughout the 1950s.)
BLACK_MASKS
Damon Knight, "In Search of
Wonder" (1956/1967), p. 259:
"Horace Gold is an amiable, prowling
kind of a man whose tastes in shirts He was also reportedly
adumbrates a private hankering to be agoraphobic, and lived
tall in the saddle. Interested, his life largely confined
alert, alarmed, skeptical, ironic, to his apartment in
anxious as a broody hen, he can no New York.
more keep from interfering with
another man's story, once he owns it, He maintained some social
than a saucer-eyed kid with a jam jar." interaction by hosting
regular poker games.
"His gargantuan optimism, and the
deeper pessimism that lies under One of the people
it, have helped to make _Galaxy_ on the guest list
the brilliant and sometimes was John Cage.
bewildering magazine that it is.
His scorn for cliches has I've often thought
been a major influence in the that you could make
modern growth of science ficiton; an odd -- possibly
his indifference to questions of dubious and dull,
content and conviction has done as but odd -- stage play
much to vitiate the field. The out of this material.
same qualities have shaped his own
work -- 5,000,000 words of it -- You'd be stuck
confessions, fact detectives, with a lot of
radio scripts, comic, boys on stage,
everything... including a little but you could
science-fantasy" play that up
as the central
subject matter:
the queer
underground of
the 1950s New York
intelligensia.
You could
write in
But: Cannastra Bill Cannastra
died in 1950, having sex
and Gold's with Tennessee And you could
"Galaxy" didn't Williams and have Edie
start until Norman Mailer. Parker sneaking
then. in, in drag.
While Jack
Ah, but: the first Kerouac sits
issue was dated in the corner (And Jackson
October 1950, and shyly peeping Pollock flips
A drunken stunt: he Cannastra died on at them. paint all over
tried to crawl out October 12. them?)
of the window of a
subway car after it Gold was probably
started moving: "I'm working on the
just going out for a first issues of
drink." He was 28. Galaxy near the
end of Cannastra's And 1950 is when
life. Gregory Corso --
fresh from jail
Maybe there is at age 20 -- met
some material Allen Ginsberg
in there...
Handling it
without
being dull
and dubious
would be he
trick.
Questions remain about
biographical details: Did Gold
have a wife in 1950? How bad
was his agoraphobia back then?
When did he actually start the
poker games?
(I don't mind cheating
on the details, but I
want to know when I'm
doing it.)
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