Good As Gold

Fascinating, funny, infuriating, savage, and totally true. Good as Gold is not only destined to join Joseph Heller's previous novels as a major American classic, it surpasses them in wisdom, skill, and hilarity and ranks as his supreme work. In Good as Gold, Joseph Heller does for the White house what he did for the military in Catch-22. Brilliantly, he captures the fractured logic of the Potomac with an absurd and moving accuracy. Dr. Bruce Gold, 48 year-old professor (Jewish) of literature (English) and author of many seminal articles in small journals (unread), finds himself facing the prospect of becoming a high Washington official. The offer comes from Ralph Newsome (Protestant), a presidential aid with an oddly diplomatic way of speaking: "I can just about guarantee that you'll get the appointment you choose as soon as you want, although I can't promise anything. We'll want to move ahead with this as speedily as possible, although we'll have to go slowly." Gold accepts (of course) and soon meets Andrea Conover, the tall, beautiful, gifted daughter (also Protestant) of a wealthy, retired career diplomat (anti-Semite), clearly the suitable mate for a man with a potential of becoming the country's (very first Jewish) Secretary of State. Gold will have to give up much (including his wife): "He had no doubt he would be disowned by his father, brother, and sister and rejected by his children. The future looked bright." A prestigious political success might be just the thing to change the attitude toward him of the members of his large family: an older brother and four older sisters who bully and baby him, and an autocratic and somewhat eccentric old father. And all this while Gold must wrestle with another problem, for he has conned his publisher into a tidy advance for a study of contemporary Jewish life in America. Thereby hangs a tale triumphant, joyful, and touching.