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Haiti: Best Nightmare on Earth: Best Nightmare on Earth
Five decades ago, award-winning author Herbert Gold traveled to Haiti on a Caribbean version of the Fulbright Scholarship. The journey proved to be a turning point in his life. Fifty years later, his attachment to the tiny Caribbean nation-his second home-remains as passionate and powerful as ever. Now, in Best Nightmare on Earth, he explores the secret life of this vibrant, volatile, violent land. "Beautiful...bizarre...dangerous...exotic, a Garden of Eden fallen into despair, a tiny nation of unimaginable misery and unpredictable grace, an island where life is a kind of literature, a world of "unlimited impossibility." This is Herbert Gold's Haiti, a country of extraordinary paradox and remarkable extremes-of gingerbread dream houses and wretched slums, of brutal repression and explosive creative energy. Where else, he asks, can you run into evil spirits on the back roads, or find the goddess of fertility and orgasm represented by a photo of a tap-dancing Shirley Temple? Where else is there such generosity amid such corruption, such humor in the midst of such desperation?In his many Haitian travels, Gold has dined with Graham Greene and chatted with the hated Duvalier oppressors. He has traded stories with CIA saboteurs, former Nazis, rum-soaked diplomats, and voodoo priests. He has taken in the cockfights and hunted for pirate treasure. He has nearly died of malaria; he has faced machete-wielding gangs of Ton-Ton Macoutes. He followed the traffic in Haitian blood to American hospitals and watched the AIDS epidemic take its toll. He listened to the steady beat of drums rolling down mist-shrouded mountains, and shared in the flirting, drinking, and laughter of the streets. He has captured the essence of this land where tragedy is the music the people dance to. Herbert Gold reflects on the country's history and politics, culture and folklore, but sees much more. He sees Haiti through the eyes of a lover: impassioned, jealous, probing, ever alert, and alive. This book will be of interest to travelers to, and people interested in the problems of, Haiti and the Caribbean; and collectors of Haitian art.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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131 people want to read
About the author
Herbert Gold
120 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 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 13, 2019
My step-brother has worked for not-for-profits dealing with education in Haiti for decades now, having begun by being immersed in a village in order to learn creole. Since then, as chance will have it, I've picked up such books as I've come across dealing with the country and its history. This particular title was found in a resale shop on Valencia in San Francisco.
Covering the period from 1953 until 1990, Gold's work tells of his many stays there, some of them for years, during the periods before the Duvalier dictatorships, during Papa's reign, then his son's, finally the turmoil following Baby Doc's flight to Europe leading up to Prosper Avril. Aristide, on the horizon, is mentioned just once. While Gold does discuss the very real consequences of Haiti's anti-democratic politics, its poverty and violence, his narrative is fundamentally sympathetic, much if consisting of amusing anecdotes and descriptions of diverse persons and their practices--a representation, he would have the reader believe, of common Haitian attitudes.
This is neither anthropology nor sociology, however. Gold's Haitian friends and acquaintances are mostly of the upper class, mostly resident in and around the major cities--or they are visitors like himself, resident aliens. Gold does speak the common language, but shanty-town and village life is viewed from the outside.
Personally, as an outsider myself, I found this to be a readable, highly entertaining book, whetting yet again my wish to accompany my brother on one of his trips to Haiti--during the cooler months, of course, and then to the still-forested highlands.
Covering the period from 1953 until 1990, Gold's work tells of his many stays there, some of them for years, during the periods before the Duvalier dictatorships, during Papa's reign, then his son's, finally the turmoil following Baby Doc's flight to Europe leading up to Prosper Avril. Aristide, on the horizon, is mentioned just once. While Gold does discuss the very real consequences of Haiti's anti-democratic politics, its poverty and violence, his narrative is fundamentally sympathetic, much if consisting of amusing anecdotes and descriptions of diverse persons and their practices--a representation, he would have the reader believe, of common Haitian attitudes.
This is neither anthropology nor sociology, however. Gold's Haitian friends and acquaintances are mostly of the upper class, mostly resident in and around the major cities--or they are visitors like himself, resident aliens. Gold does speak the common language, but shanty-town and village life is viewed from the outside.
Personally, as an outsider myself, I found this to be a readable, highly entertaining book, whetting yet again my wish to accompany my brother on one of his trips to Haiti--during the cooler months, of course, and then to the still-forested highlands.
February 16, 2010
I've been reading a lot about Haiti lately, trying to learn more about this quixotic place. I'd heard that Gold's memoir, Best Nightmare on Earth, provided an especially good look into mid-century life from an expat's perspective, especially when read in tandem with Graham Greene's The Comedians. This is precisely how I tackled them.
Gold's book was excellent and engaging, covering his multiple trips in great detail. He lived in Haiti for a few different stints over a period of several decades, with visits interspersed in between. I would have liked a bit more cohesion about the timeline - it was tough to keep track of where he was in Haiti's history - but perhaps that was part of the point. Haiti never really changes from its roots, and with each return visit, though the violence and strife continued to escalate, the fundamental corruption and difficulties remained constant.
Eerily, one of the suggestions for improving life in Haiti (and specifically in Port-au-Prince) was a massive earthquake that would destroy everything and force the populace to rebuild. Written twenty years before the recent devastation, the suggestion was chilling.
Gold's book was excellent and engaging, covering his multiple trips in great detail. He lived in Haiti for a few different stints over a period of several decades, with visits interspersed in between. I would have liked a bit more cohesion about the timeline - it was tough to keep track of where he was in Haiti's history - but perhaps that was part of the point. Haiti never really changes from its roots, and with each return visit, though the violence and strife continued to escalate, the fundamental corruption and difficulties remained constant.
Eerily, one of the suggestions for improving life in Haiti (and specifically in Port-au-Prince) was a massive earthquake that would destroy everything and force the populace to rebuild. Written twenty years before the recent devastation, the suggestion was chilling.
January 23, 2013
It's a tragic story in light of the earthquake which did destroy much of Haiti and the typhoid and AIDS epidemics which have occurred since this book was published. It still reflects the character of the people and place and I expect this remains despite the recurring tragedies. Although as Imgot closer touted end of the book it seemed that the people have been changed by the system they have lived under.
July 19, 2007
gold lived and traveled in haiti for 37 years. unlike a lot of travel books, this one reflects the feeling of a place actually lived in.
October 24, 2024
As you can probably tell from the title, Herbert Gold’s book deals with the paradox at the heart of Haiti, its beauty and its terrors. It features some of the most beautiful oceans and although not densely jungled, its terraced mountainsides are breathtaking.
But a lot of its aesthetic beauty is either superficial, or, as with brightly painted favelas the world over, meant to mask crushing poverty. A series of brutal repressions from the homefront—one venal and corrupt coffer-raiding strongman after another—gave the country a bit of a complex. Multi-century exploitation by white interlopers involved in everything from political monkeywrenching to slaving obviously didn’t help matters.
And still, to call Gold’s relationship with the nation love-hate is to do a disservice to the man and his book. There’s lots of love, some hate, but mostly astonishment, at the vitality constantly on display, fed as much as drained by the prospect of violent death.
Gold covers it all, from real voodoo ceremonies conducted in dark subbasements involving actual animal sacrifice to silly Baron Samedi tchotchkes sold to superstition-hungry tourists. He makes friends, listens to their stories, their theories on everything from the racial caste system to the cause of the plague killing the island’s main domestic livestock, the black pig.
Gold’s visits are spaced out over the course of decades, with his first occurring when he was a young journalist, his last when his beard is gray. He never swears the country off entirely, though sometimes he leaves in a more despairing mood than at others. As he grows older, he begins to bring his kids along for visits—political and literal climates permitting—hoping to learn new ways of seeing from their fresh eyes.
His style is colorful, but a little too personal and idiosyncratic for someone looking for a reliable first-time tour guide. He's not as “gonzo,” as Hunter S. Thompson—and he’s never under the influence of anything stronger than rum. But there is too much of a New Journalist strain coursing through this thing. He centers himself and his own musings too much in the narrative, and prefers a staccato, declarative style that makes every statement sound like a typewritten koan. He prefers enigma to explication, the poetic and flighty to the straightforward every time.
Occasionally he shows flourishes of something closer to Tom Wolfe’s florid and colorful style, and when he hits his stride, it can be a sight to behold.
But I was seeking a balance, between personal involvement (always there for a reporter, especially in life and death situations) and enough dispassion to...well... let the reader learn. I understand why Gold might have decided to adopt such a hyper-subjective, nigh hallucinatory tact. Haiti can be a wild place, and you can only be so calm when describing a man being burned to death by his village because they thought him a werewolf.
But maybe it’s that very madness that necessitates a more sober eye and style all the more.
But a lot of its aesthetic beauty is either superficial, or, as with brightly painted favelas the world over, meant to mask crushing poverty. A series of brutal repressions from the homefront—one venal and corrupt coffer-raiding strongman after another—gave the country a bit of a complex. Multi-century exploitation by white interlopers involved in everything from political monkeywrenching to slaving obviously didn’t help matters.
And still, to call Gold’s relationship with the nation love-hate is to do a disservice to the man and his book. There’s lots of love, some hate, but mostly astonishment, at the vitality constantly on display, fed as much as drained by the prospect of violent death.
Gold covers it all, from real voodoo ceremonies conducted in dark subbasements involving actual animal sacrifice to silly Baron Samedi tchotchkes sold to superstition-hungry tourists. He makes friends, listens to their stories, their theories on everything from the racial caste system to the cause of the plague killing the island’s main domestic livestock, the black pig.
Gold’s visits are spaced out over the course of decades, with his first occurring when he was a young journalist, his last when his beard is gray. He never swears the country off entirely, though sometimes he leaves in a more despairing mood than at others. As he grows older, he begins to bring his kids along for visits—political and literal climates permitting—hoping to learn new ways of seeing from their fresh eyes.
His style is colorful, but a little too personal and idiosyncratic for someone looking for a reliable first-time tour guide. He's not as “gonzo,” as Hunter S. Thompson—and he’s never under the influence of anything stronger than rum. But there is too much of a New Journalist strain coursing through this thing. He centers himself and his own musings too much in the narrative, and prefers a staccato, declarative style that makes every statement sound like a typewritten koan. He prefers enigma to explication, the poetic and flighty to the straightforward every time.
Occasionally he shows flourishes of something closer to Tom Wolfe’s florid and colorful style, and when he hits his stride, it can be a sight to behold.
But I was seeking a balance, between personal involvement (always there for a reporter, especially in life and death situations) and enough dispassion to...well... let the reader learn. I understand why Gold might have decided to adopt such a hyper-subjective, nigh hallucinatory tact. Haiti can be a wild place, and you can only be so calm when describing a man being burned to death by his village because they thought him a werewolf.
But maybe it’s that very madness that necessitates a more sober eye and style all the more.
March 13, 2024
Country in need of a continual renaissance
Everyone who travels has a first love. Maybe it would be the country you saw first; you lived there and fell in love with a place entirely different from where you grew up. Maybe it would be a country that you saw after a long list of disappointing places that were nothing like you hoped. Myself, I fell in love with several, but after all, home has its comforts and familiarities that are close to your heart. But, I think that a person who falls in love with a country despite its glaring poverty, misrule, corruption and violence has to have some special qualities. Maybe, just maybe, that country would have some special qualities in return. I don’t know, I’ve never been to Haiti.
Young Herbert Gold first went to Haiti in the 1950s, married with children, on a fellowship. He was supposed to study Haitian institutions and give some lectures, but after a failure to recognize the immense talent of a certain Haitian writer in comparison with Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, his lectures were cancelled. He was left free to schmooze and hang out with various Haitian intellectuals and artists, to get the feel of the land. Haiti was in a period of relatively calm and benign rule then, but “its problems were not being solved by its many talents. This “renaissance”….was a mere respite in a long attractive disaster.” (p.68) Gold returned over and over, after a divorce, and for decades as a journalist, as a writer. Apparently disasters had some appeal to him. Not to me. He came to know the country well and once was even offered a post in San Francisco as Haitian consul. He declined. He saw how Haiti headed for the bottom, through the rule of Papa Doc and his less-than-sterling son, known as “Baby Doc”. He was there again when in 1986 Baby Doc had to hit the road for a luxurious life on embezzled funds in France.
Gold’s book is a kind of history of his long love affair with Haiti, full of interesting characters and a view of life at the top, a view that only a foreigner whose sympathy lay with Haiti could have had. It’s neither anthropology nor history, but a very well-written, long-lasting impression of the country. Maybe you could call it a travel book, but to me it was more a sad love affair. As he said at the end, on p.299, “In Haiti, all the important things are beautiful; only reality needs a bit of improvement.” Today as the very basis of Haitian society collapses into chaos, when nobody really wants to try to straighten things out, that statement is both tragic and prescient.
If you’d like to get the feel of Haiti and a foreigner’s life there over three decades, you should definitely find this book. It’s not written from the point of view of an average Haitian, suffering at the bottom, rather it contains the impressions of an American who loved the country and with sorrow watched its unending trials.
Everyone who travels has a first love. Maybe it would be the country you saw first; you lived there and fell in love with a place entirely different from where you grew up. Maybe it would be a country that you saw after a long list of disappointing places that were nothing like you hoped. Myself, I fell in love with several, but after all, home has its comforts and familiarities that are close to your heart. But, I think that a person who falls in love with a country despite its glaring poverty, misrule, corruption and violence has to have some special qualities. Maybe, just maybe, that country would have some special qualities in return. I don’t know, I’ve never been to Haiti.
Young Herbert Gold first went to Haiti in the 1950s, married with children, on a fellowship. He was supposed to study Haitian institutions and give some lectures, but after a failure to recognize the immense talent of a certain Haitian writer in comparison with Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, his lectures were cancelled. He was left free to schmooze and hang out with various Haitian intellectuals and artists, to get the feel of the land. Haiti was in a period of relatively calm and benign rule then, but “its problems were not being solved by its many talents. This “renaissance”….was a mere respite in a long attractive disaster.” (p.68) Gold returned over and over, after a divorce, and for decades as a journalist, as a writer. Apparently disasters had some appeal to him. Not to me. He came to know the country well and once was even offered a post in San Francisco as Haitian consul. He declined. He saw how Haiti headed for the bottom, through the rule of Papa Doc and his less-than-sterling son, known as “Baby Doc”. He was there again when in 1986 Baby Doc had to hit the road for a luxurious life on embezzled funds in France.
Gold’s book is a kind of history of his long love affair with Haiti, full of interesting characters and a view of life at the top, a view that only a foreigner whose sympathy lay with Haiti could have had. It’s neither anthropology nor history, but a very well-written, long-lasting impression of the country. Maybe you could call it a travel book, but to me it was more a sad love affair. As he said at the end, on p.299, “In Haiti, all the important things are beautiful; only reality needs a bit of improvement.” Today as the very basis of Haitian society collapses into chaos, when nobody really wants to try to straighten things out, that statement is both tragic and prescient.
If you’d like to get the feel of Haiti and a foreigner’s life there over three decades, you should definitely find this book. It’s not written from the point of view of an average Haitian, suffering at the bottom, rather it contains the impressions of an American who loved the country and with sorrow watched its unending trials.
May 17, 2023
Hell of a book. Having been born in '81 I like that this takes me up until '90. Read a bunch of development texts and relief workers stories since then, but I feel this really helped me understand the problems and the joy of Haiti better.
March 3, 2025
Not the best book I have read on Haiti, a country that I seem to be marginally fascinated with, but glad I read it.
October 28, 2025
Recommended by Theodore Dalrymple. Hoped it would resemble Dalrymple's excellent travel journals. Instead, it was pompous and preachy.
July 11, 2023
I dont know what made me think of this book today, but I read it several years ago and thought it was a fascinating read. It really left an impression on me. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews