Good As Gold

by Joseph Heller

Bruce Gold, a middle-aged, Jewish professor of English literature, finds himself on the brink of a golden career in politics -- and not a moment too soon, as Gold yearns for an opportunity to transform a less-than-picture-perfect His children think little of him, his intimidating father endlessly bullies him, and his wife is so oblivious that she doesn't even notice he's left her. As funny as it is sad, Good as Gold is a story of children grown up, parents grown old, and friends and lovers grown apart -- a story that is inimitably Heller.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Classics, Literature, Novels, Jewish, American

445 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Joseph Heller was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel Catch-22, a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice. He was nominated in 1972 for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is no way to create another Catch-22 so Good as Gold isn’t as good as gold, probably it is as good as tin at its best.

Gold had little doubt he would succeed in Washington if once given the chance, for he was a master at diplomacy and palace intrigue. He was the department's deadliest strategist in the conflict now raging to attract students to subjects in liberal arts from other divisions of the college and to subjects in English from other departments in liberal arts.

Should a professor and author of many unread, seminal articles in small journals go for a political career? No. Never. Otherwise he would be just a subject for a mediocre and insipid novel such as Good as Gold.
And what about love? There is a whole lot of love…

‘I can’t ball you today,’ she told him the moment they were inside, ‘but I give good head.’
Actually, her head was only so-so, but Gold did not criticize and Gold did not care. Before the sun set that same day he learned that Linda Book was the easiest person to give his heart to that he’d ever met. Gold had this penchant for falling in love. Whenever he was at leisure he fell in love. Sometimes he fell in love for as long as four months; most often, though, for six or eight weeks. Once or twice he had fallen in love for a minute. Confident that this new attachment had no better chance of surviving than the others, he yielded himself to it completely.

He who is blessed with mediocrity is mediocre in everything including love.

[David Lentz · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Good as Gold" is pretty much as good as Heller gets in the rarefied air of "Catch 22" and "Something Happened." Clearly, this novelist ranks among the finest American satirists and performs a great service to readers insofar as satirists not only speak truth to corrupt power but diminish it by rendering it laughable. One is apt less to fear and consent to sinister forces which become imbecilic. The premise for the narrative is about a Jewish intellectual named Gold who is invited to become Secretary of State and the tragicomic series of events which lead him to a decision point about the importance of striving for vast and even absolute power. Like "Catch 22" it is government bureaucracy and ineptness which catch the major blows of Heller's narrative. The antics of Congress provide a sufficiently ample context for the absurdity of power portrayed in "Good as Gold." One wonders what tragic flaws exist in people who seek power relentlessly on a grand scale: is it egomania, narcissism, greed, materialism, wealth, control or all of the above? Is our Congress with some notable exceptions not on the whole a National Museum of Egomania? The dialogue in this novel is witty and laugh out-loud pithy in its portrayal of those who pursue with a single minded obsession their will to power within the structure of government. Why isn't the will to power understood for the inherent human defects that its pursuit proves so ubiquitously? Don't we have more than enough examples from human history which make this point evident, even obvious, especially when self-interest and arrogance become central in the noxious stew of greed driving the will to power. Are arrogant people only able to detect it retrospectively after their descent, whether forced or unforced, into humility? Is greed evident only after wealth is driven into poverty? Is humanity a necessary casualty and blind spot for individuals who pursue wealth above all on a grand scale? How much money and power are enough? Has anyone read Goethe's "Faust"? Heller's second premise for the novel is to write a book about what it means to experience being a Jew in America in the 20th century. His portrait of life in New York among an extended Jewish family is telling and intriguing. It is a narrative about the experience of bigotry, stereotyping and profiling. The dialogue in this novel is absolutely masterful and Heller pulls no punches. Like Yossarian we find in Gold a man bewildered by the absurdity of the society in which he is immersed. In this sense Gold becomes an everyman trying to make sense of unfathomable forces in everyday life. Gold reminded me of the protagonist, John Self, of Martin Amis in "Money" in that one of the greatest absurdities is why he behaves as he does. If Gold were malevolent, his villainy by virtue of his behavior would steal any sympathy which a generous reader might bestow upon such a highly intelligent but fundamentally flawed protagonist. It is the bewilderment and ineptitude and brilliance of the protagonists of Heller's novels which intrigue readers as they are all Heller himself: a man intellectually at war with himself and his own society, a Hobbesian jungle run by fools masquerading as saviors within an arrogant, democratic bastion of civilization. The novel starts slowly and will reward patient readers and it ends somewhat abruptly with intriguing story lines abruptly closed down as if Heller after 445 pages realized his book was becoming longish and he was tired of writing it. Heller ranks in the Pantheon of American writers of the extraordinary caliber of Saul Bellow and Kurt Vonnegut. Read this great novel for the pure comic wit evident in the story line, characters and dialogue -- then take away everything else that Heller generously offers to reward judicious readers.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

A similar style satire to Catch 22 but nowhere near as effective.

[Kevin Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve now read 3 of the 5 novels Joseph Heller has written that aren’t Catch-22 (or its sequel) and I am putting forth his name on the list of most underrated. Don’t worry, I have the list somewhere. He’s obviously a terrific writer but his satirization of men, family, art, religion is first rate. He’s hilarious and creates indelible characters you can’t stop reading about (well, I couldn’t). I’m sure you’ve read Catch-22 but give another of his novels a chance. I have Picture This and God Knows still to read but I cannot imagine I’ll change my mind.

[ElizaBeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Everything Joseph Heller ever wrote, other than Catch-22, is utter crap. I'm beginning to believe the theory that it was plagarized...

[David Eppenstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. I read "Catch 22" in college in the late '60's and thought it was one of the best books I had ever read. Now some 50 years later I still regard "Catch 22" as a great book but never knew anything about Heller's later work. I recently discovered this book and when I learned it was a political satire I purchased it. I thought this book just might be what I needed to put all of vehemence of our current election into a proper humorous perspective. Sadly, I have been disappointed both by this book as well as they outcome of our election. But this review is about the book and it is about Bruce Gold an English professor at a NYC college. The book is actually two stories about Bruce, one is about his very Jewish family and the other is a more satirical story about Bruce's attempt to secure a presidential appointment in Washington. The Jewish family story is one that non-Jews probably won't find very interesting or entertaining for a number of reasons. One reason in particular is the over use of Yiddish words and phrases without interpretation. This phase of the book seems to have been written solely for the benefit of other Jews who may identify with the family members. As such it was unappealing and not very humorous.

The political phase of the book was typical Heller and the use of nonsensical double talk will easily recall the dialogue of Major Major Major and Milo Minderbinder from "Catch 22". Where this type of conversation is employed the book can be rather funny but, unfortunately, the humor is dated and hasn't aged well. I doubt anybody that hasn't lived through the '50's and '60's will understand the many cultural and historic references made in the book. At one point several slogans from old TV commercials is mentioned that caused me to chuckle but I doubt anybody under 50 would know what was being mentioned. The book is dated and so is its humor. Near the end Bruce is involved in an attempt to have a sexual romp with two women in adjoining hotel rooms. I thought I was reading a screenplay from an old Peter Sellers comedy and not a serious political satire or even a not so serious satire. Alas, the book failed to lift my political spirits or re-engage my political interests. The book may have been better received when it was originally released in the '70's but now not so much.

[1.1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heller can do no wrong. This book is funny in all the right ways. It may prove reminiscent of Catch 22 but is really quite different. The plot, for instance, is way more mundane and easy to follow, so you would not be worth your salt at all if you gave up reading a masterpiece like this. The writing is top notch, the characters and situations are simultaneously hilarious and piquantly sorrowful. It's got a playful edge to it, as well. Heller puts in references to himself, and it seems like this is a book about writing a book except done well, so it's not a tiresome conceit at all.

Loved it. I was burning through 50 pages in single sittings, and I don't have a lot of time or focus lately, so that says something.

The part about protestant children pulling down a Jewish boy's pants and spitting on his penis is so funny, still, that I wonder how Heller came up with or it or if someone he knew actually lived that. And it't not even the best part.

[Ashish · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars!

Catch-22 is one of my favourite novels and this book by Heller manages to take me back to the same place. Its a brilliant book filled with acerbic wit, biting satire and a general disdain for conventional humour. The characters are eccentric and highly incorrigible. Its hilarious in its portrayal of a dysfunctional Jewish family full of horrible people who are at each other's throats. Even better is the representation of the inner workings of the government and it's as Kafkaesque as one would imagine, with a dollop of helplessness and frustration. Brilliant book, highly recommended for anyone who found Catch-22 to be too daunting and weird and wants to give Heller another shot (which you totally should).

[Logan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was definitely not a fan of this book. Heller's writing style is fine, but I did not care for the story. It was vulgar and had only one character with any redeeming qualities, who was basically the victim. The main character is selfish, immoral, petty, and just about any other bad attribute you can think of. He's a jerk. His family is a bunch of jerks. His peers are a bunch of jerks. Only his wife is kind and decent, yet, he lies and cheats on her repeatedly. The book was supposed to be a humorous look at politics and the losers running the government, but I missed the humor. Not a fan!

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Far from being as good as gold, this book was bad. Very bad. It might have been readable if you like reading about annoying Jewish families, don't care if no one in the book is likable, and find contradictory politicians endlessly amusing. I only finished it because I wanted to see if it could possibly get worse. It did. Heller broke his narrative near the end to make a meta-statement about what he should have his character do. Later, he writes several options for a sentence and doesn't clear up which one he actually wants to happen... it reads like a first draft, aimlessly wanders from time to place, characters are one-dimensional and the one amusing aspect, the hopelessly contradictory politician, is run into the ground over and over. I don't remember Catch-22 being anywhere near this bad.

[Rebeka · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a definition of a friend I once heard expressed by my Swedish publisher. He's Jewish, Ralph, and he lived in Germany under Hitler as a child until his family escaped. He has only one test of a friend now, he told me. "Would he hide me?" is the question he asks. It's pretty much my test of a friend too, when I come down to it. Ralph, if Hitler returns, would you hide me?

I don't think anyone would read Good As Gold if Joseph Heller hadn't written the instant classic Catch-22. Heller here is still a master of satire and the absurd, I definitely don't detract any points for his use of language and juxtaposition. It did have more laugh-out-loud moments than any book in recent reading I can recall. It really is such a joy for me to read a writer who is just so dang clever and witty.

And yet, and yet... the protagonist and the setting of Good As Gold was a snore. If this was an author-replacement character, then I feel like Joseph Heller hated himself too much. Bruce Gold is a Jewish professor of English, who runs into contradictions all the time. He's highly educated, yet very narrow-minded. He hates being discriminated against for being a Jew, yet he hates black people. He thinks old people are disgusting, yet he's in his fifties or sixties himself. He is saddened by people not caring about him, yet he himself gladly turns away from his relatives in need. He remorselessly cheats on his wife, yet clutches his pearls when one of his lays freely talks about her own escapades.

I feel like this was a sort of commentary on how most people are motivated by self-interest, about the lines in the sand we draw for in-group/out-group, about selfishness of the individual and the society, about the contradictory and undefinable nature of the self... yet all it made me feel was tired. Most probably this was intended to be very relatable for the American Jewish man of the 80s and 90s, but for this Eastern European woman of 2020s everyone came off as really detestable with nary a consequence and only the most subtle awareness of it.

Really, I think something went wrong while editing this tome. It went on for far too long. There were jokes that were driven into the ground with repetitiveness. Its themes felt too muted and pale - Joseph Heller seemed to be going in circles, trying to find the right way to portray and phrase things, which made it all seem kinda insipid. There were many scenes in the novel that leaned on the fourth wall and addressed the reader, toying with the idea that 'well what would happen if things went on this way?' and characters were literally spirited in and out of scenes. That made the novel very draft-ish or even lazy. It seemed like Joseph Heller couldn't quite think of a way two characters would meet, so he said, eh, whatever, and just randomly dropped them in the same unlikely place.

Overall, I really wanted to like this, but it ended up lukewarm.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t really get it until the end. The cynicism is harder here than in Catch-22. At least it’s about war there, which makes sense.

Maybe longer than it needs to be, or maybe everything seems like that lately. Good stuff.

[Richard Kramer]

So far loving this. Heard Heller's daughter interviewed on NYT Book Review podcast. Tanenhaus said something about this being laugh out loud funny and after twenty pages he's been proven right. The first scene is an excruciating Jewish family dinner. Now Kissinger is somehow in the mix. I want to take the phone off the hook or turn it off or whatever you do these days. I want to get into bed with some kugel and read this and laugh and wince. I haven't read Heller since SOMETHING HAPPENED came out and I was a teenager and felt like a big grownup. I'd like to read that again. There are many things I would like to do again. How many of them will I get to do? Now I'm depressed.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heller takes on the government and the Jewish experience in America. Heller knows how write about the mundane interactions between people, find the irony, and make it an involving story. This may be Heller's most autobiographical work. Good as Gold is Heller at his acerbic, sarcastic and flippant best.

[Sherrie Gingery · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! There were several times I laughed out loud. I rate Good as Gold as good as Catch-22, albeit the plot is not nearly as complicated as some of Heller's earlier works.

A must read for anyone likes satire and sharp dialogue.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joseph Heller is superb. The writing is satirical, the characters are awful people and the situation is all too familiar. If you've ever felt stressed out and annoyed by your family, if you've ever felt mislead and confused by your government, this book is for you. I laughed the whole way through.

[Callen Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

False advertising

[C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could not be bothered finishing this.

[Frederick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was nineteen when this novel came out. The year was 1979. While it is a tortured work, it is of its time. Luckily for me, I was of its time. Almost every historical figure mentioned (and most of these figures are mentioned in a chapter in which the main character peruses newspaper clippings about Henry Kissinger, who was, in 1979, a newly former Secretary Of State) is familiar to me.
At times the book seems prescient about our era. After all, the resignation of Richard Nixon (which occurred after Congress voted to impeach him but just before that body could, indeed, impeach him) looms over this story of a man who has a White House appointment dangled before him.
The comedy does not work very well here. It is forced. There are some brilliant lines.
The parts I liked a lot were about the main character's family in Coney Island. There is some narrative experimentation in this book. Heller does that well. But as a whole, a sense of frustration with his own writing informs Heller's GOOD AS GOLD.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are just some writers I DESPERATELY hope would like me if they met me. Joseph Heller is one of them.

Good as Gold is a satire about a Jewish man offered a position in the US government. It’s full of hate for Henry Kissinger (backed up with evidence!), Yiddish, exasperating/exasperated family members, adultery, equivocation, and Jews. I admit that sometimes it felt like a slog to get through, but I kept pushing forward and I ended up enjoying myself. The dialogue is so clever and contains a number of excellent monologues that belong on a stage. There are so many side characters that it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of who is who, but you start to get to know them better as you read further. This is my second Heller book (I bet you can guess the first), and I absolutely plan to read more after this.

[Karn Kher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Follows the same path as Something Happened. Satire filled to brim with pathos, cynicism and humor. One man's life as he interacts with a specific industry (politics/Washington) while being Jewish. It's fun, funny and funnily factual. Heller is great as the grand absurdist drawing out the illogical nature of human relationships. This is no Catch-22. It had far more memorable characters. This is no Something Happened. It had a far sadder ending. This by virtue of its context, is a funny/sad look into the Jewish immigrant life in America interacting with the established 1% residing in Washington D.C.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the elements are here: the meta-layer of an author writing about the Jewish experience, the eccentric sprawl of a big family, and the ripe-for-Heller satire of White House politics...yet Good as Gold never quite brings alchemizes them. Heller circles his themes for 500 pages without ever finding lift.

A few tricks show the hand of a gifted writer, including heavy Yiddish seasoning, long tirades against Henry Kissinger, a self-referential headline, and a late fourth wall jab at the book itself. But the spark never takes. It's smart, it's occasionally funny, but beneath it all are the screams of a writer haunted by the brilliance of his first success, still trying to summon it back two decades later.

[David]

One thing it is certainly not is the claim its jacket copy makes: better than Catch 22. It has its moments, which is what I’ve been saying about virtually every book I finished in the last 48 hours, but it also has its doldrums especially when it gets into a half-Yiddish character sketch of Henry Kissinger.

[Bob Box · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in 1979. A story of children grown up, parents grown old and friends grown apart.

[N Simila · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book. First longer book that I’ve read in a while (about 450 pages), and it took me a bit longer to read it. This book had some great lines, and was also pretty funny. Some chapters, however, dragged on. I specifically liked the parts with dialogue (most of the book). The parts that lulled were typically on Gold’s (the protagonist) research for his writings. Overall: 3.5 stars. I would definitely read more Joseph Heller.

[Agnes Kelemen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some parts are fantastic, but on the whole there is too much alienation and repetition in it and there are so much better books on the same contradictions of American Jewish life by Philip Roth!

[Oscar Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like Catch-22 but not as good. The criticism of US politics and society feels dated (obviously), but in a way that is kinda funny reading it today. It's like someone complaining about the dangers of children reading too many comic books, like bro the kids are in the Metaverse now, things get way worse.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I now have three Heller novels under my belt, and I swear it seems like each time I've cracked one his books, I'm reading a different author. There are some tell-tale mannerisms that give him away, but each work is very distinct.

The first was "Catch-22", and as the first, now feels to me like Classic-Heller, where obliviously dense characters talk around in circles to demonstrate the senselessness of war. Next came "Something Happened", which felt like Updike-Heller, in which we follow around a middle-class everyman through the doldrums of his personal life and give witness to the nervous elevation of his everyday mundanity to almost epic poeticism. And now with "Good as Gold", I feel like I'm reading Roth-Heller, in which a grumpy Jew laments his heritage and all the subsequent burdens it saddles him with in his many lives: family, extra-marital, business, political, etc.

[Oh, and I almost forgot I also read "Closing Time", but that's just a slightly more opaque extension of the book to which it is a sequel, "Catch-22", and therefore, Classic-Heller.:]

"Good as Gold" succeeds to a degree, in painting the picture of a neurotic college professor, Bruce Gold, who is not immediately likable. He sulks, he complains, he projects a bit of self-hatred onto his sometimes unlikable family. He cheats on his wife. He's surrounded by seemingly closeted anti-semites, and is tasked with writing a book about the Jewish experience in America, which he readily agrees to do even though he's not quite sure he's actually had a proper Jewish experience.

There are two distinct tones in this work, the first which echoes Philip Roth, in which Heller rather poigantly delves into the family history of Gold. Many of his siblings and especially his father are portrayed initially as horrible people. As Heller explores the lives of brother Sid, and father Julius, in particular, they become far more sympathetic characters. I was actually quite moved by the tangle of love and hate running between the various siblings and their widower father.

The second tone harkens back to "Catch-22", and is almost jarring the way its silly conversations of double-speak are juxtaposed against the more serious Gold family history. In Heller's first novel, this paradoxical dialogue is used to skewer the American military, while here he is attacking the government, as we follow Gold's ambition to become the first Jewish Secretary of State (even though Henry Kissinger beat him to it). While entertaining, all of the contradictory banter isn't quite as amusing as it was in "Catch-22". Whereas in the original work, all of the convoluted, nonsensical logic was laid out very methodically until you suddenly realized that nothing anyone said made any sense, "Good As Gold" just throws out such statements time after time, almost to the point of it feeling gimmicky. It's still a neat trick to see, but not quite as novel as the first time I saw it.

There are a few odd ticks that Heller tosses out that didn't really ruin the book or anything, but did stand out. At one point, Heller, for one single paragraph, breaks the fourth wall, as he begins explaining some of the things he is considering next for Gold's story. He then dismisses the ideas, and gets back to being a regular old narrator. (Although is a sorta-kinda dream sequence later in the book, he actually revisits those ideas.) Secondly, at one point, Gold seems to suddenly find himself in a good mood, and begins doing research on a book he wants to write about Henry Kissinger. There is then a rather lengthy discussion about Henry Kissinger. While I undertand that Kissinger's experiences in Washington do bear some light on the "Jewish Experience in America", and though there is a through-line about Gold insistently despising Kissinger, it was rather odd to suddenly be spending such an in depth moment listening to a detailed discourse about him. An odd moment, at the very least.

In the end, I did enjoy the novel, and read it rather quickly despite its size. And quirks aside, I still look forward to getting into another Heller novel to see if a fourth version of the author comes out to play.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in April 2003.

Heller's third novel reads almost as though it were the book of a Woody Allen film. It is about the Jewish experience in the US in the late seventies, and contains much of the same kind of bitter sweet humour so common in Allen's work. Good as Gold centres around a second generation American Jew, Bruce Gold, who is entering middle age and who is desperate to be taken seriously - as a writer, as a family member (particularly by his irascible father and brother), as someone who could make a mark in the world. Most of the story is about his desperate pursuit of a job in Washington, once he hears that the President was impressed by one of his essays. The question is, how much of his principles and his life is he prepared to sacrifice?

It is pretty familiar ground, and much of Good as Gold now comes over as dated. It naturally received the standard Joseph Heller review: someone described it as "his best since Catch-22". Other novels since have taken that title, but Good as Good is still funny and occasionally disturbing as a portrait of a man becoming overwhelmed by ambition.

[Rick Seery · Rating 2 out of 5]

or 'The Pains of Not Being Saul Bellow.' This is such a mess of jarring modes - from overly conspicuous satire to outraged liberal arts polemic to Jewish family saga. The satire is second fiddle Terry Southern. Diet Southern which appears to re-iterate the same one-note gag all too numerously. The anger Heller mounts towards Henry Kissinger is just too obvious - it takes a classical, outraged liberal perspective that we could get anywhere; file next to Philip Roth and Oliver Stone under "obvious liberal political ramblings."

Tonally, the novel is haggard. Are we actually meant to feel for Bruce Gold? He's trapped by his own idiocies and shallows, yet occasionally Heller imbues him with a tragedy or earnestness which is completely inconsistent with the staunch comedic vein that pumps the main narrative. Is Gold meant to have a semblance of an inner life?

The exploration of Jewish family life (and its themes of insecurity, harrassment, hostility, sibling rivalries, etc) in New York appears like it might have been copied out of a Saul Bellow novel by some nuisance of a child with National Lampoon aspirations.
However, it's pretty entertaining for all it's bizarre tonal misgivings, glaring narrative flaws and dated, tiresome satire. A chortlesome dud.