The Optimist

by Herbert Gold

The Optimist is a novel written by Herbert Gold that tells the story of a man named Leo Feldman, a Jewish immigrant who moves to America in the 1930s. Leo is a naturally optimistic person who believes in the American dream and the endless possibilities that come with hard work and determination.Throughout the novel, Leo faces numerous challenges and setbacks, including poverty, discrimination, and the horrors of World War II. However, he never loses his optimism and continues to work hard and believe in himself and his dreams.The novel is a powerful exploration of the immigrant experience and the resilience of the human spirit. It is a story of hope, perseverance, and the power of positive thinking. Gold's writing is both evocative and insightful, capturing the essence of Leo's character and the world he inhabits.Overall, The Optimist is a compelling and uplifting novel that will resonate with readers who believe in the power of optimism and the importance of never giving up on your dreams.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

408 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 1959

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.