The Man Who Was Not With It

by Herbert Gold

The Man Who Was Not With It is the story of young Bud Williams and his safari southward to Florida. On the way, he is abruptly confronted with the con men, addicts, and freaks, and the bruised innocence, of carnival and nightclub life. 

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literature

314 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

San 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.

Reviews

[Kenneth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The edition I actually read was a the first paperback published by Permabooks (an imprint of Pocket Books) in 1957, and was retitled "The Wild Ones". I didn't see this edition as an option to select here on Goodreads. The copy I have was originally my father's. The author was associated with some of the Beat writers in the mid-20th Century. The plot revolves around a character named Bud Williams who left home and college in the early/mid-1950's to join a traveling carnival. As the story evolves, he has to deal with heroin addiction (his own and others), his relationship with his father, with his coworkers and with women. It's a story of one young man's conflicted struggle as he grows up and matures, trying to stay loyal to friends and to his young wife.

[Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book because author Ricky Jay referenced it. I marginally enjoyed the first half but I did not finish it. The protagonists character knows the life of the carnival barker and his stilted narrative is occasionally enjoyable.
I think this would be much better as an audio book recited in a barkers slow exaggerated tone with sound effects. Overall, it's a sad story of of a young man drifting across places and short term jobs not really knowing what he's searching for.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tedious, tedious stuff. I disliked the 1st 100 pages and was set to put it down, but the middle third was really great. Unfortunately, the last act was even worse than the first. Every time I read about someone's nose wart or pulling down or touching their eyelid, I'll think of this misfire of a novel.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good tale of a young carne finding his path in life. I have enjoyed carnivals and fairs considerably more since reading it. Written with a tone that reminds me of Knut Hamsun at times...a little insane but lovable.