End of the Road

By R. Z. Sheppard

MY LAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS by HERBERT GOLD 246 pages. Random House. $6.95.

The Jewish American fiction writer has had to contend with two Diasporas. First, there was the historical dispersion of his ancestors and heritage: immigrants eagerly filling in the blanks of America, often leaving their sons and daughters confused about where they came from and who they were. This, in fact, became the principal subject of Jewish American writing. The second Diaspora affected the subject itself. Even by the mid-1960s, fiction about Jews had spread pretty thin.

Herbert Gold, now 48, is sticking with the process to the bittersweet end. His story, Heart of the Artichoke (1951), with its rich portrait of the tough Cleveland grocer modeled on Gold's own father, is a classic of J.A. fiction. But by the time Gold recut his tale in Fathers (1967), the material had worn badly. In My Last Two Thousand Years, Gold drops all pretense of storytelling and joins the decolletage school of literary autobiography: revealing just enough to entice the reader into turning the pages, even after it becomes apparent that the author will never satisfactorily deliver himself to the public.

We hear again what it was like to grow up bright and sensitive in Lakewood, Ohio. His Stateside Army experi ence during World War II includes the familiar rich, condescending WASP and bullying lieutenant. Later comes a dis satisfying family life in Detroit. Adul tery and divorce are followed by New York sex-and-guilt games and the price one pays in lost work time. For the man nered fictional version, see Gold's novel Salt.

It is the big town against "Huckle berry Cohen," Rastignac or whatever literary allusion Gold chooses. There are temptations denied. Gold rejects a p.r. man's proposal to turn him into a rich and famous literary package with his name in Leonard Lyons' column. One wishes Gold had gone on to explain how his name eventually did get into Lyons' column.

Finally, on a U.S. Government-sponsored stay in Haiti he senses Jewishness as an unformed community of wanderers. Trips to Israel begin to focus his Jewish heritage. Small, spartan and disciplined by challenge, Israel for Gold seems like some sort of milk farm of the soul. The words pour out -- regret for not being worthy of his past, pride at Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, and a feeling that even "the perfect story" and "the perfect girl" are not enough. Amer ica, in fact, is not enough.

What is enough for Gold? After meeting an Israeli girl, taking her home and to bed, he walks through the Jeru salem night thinking that the history of the lost Jews of Lakewood, Haiti and Auschwitz all converge in himself -- "a man walking across Jerusalem at night after a party and taking a girl home, with the eyes that sparkled in the sky oblivious to his every move."

To Jews who have experienced real oppression or deep religious joy, Gold's self-centered expressions of fulfillment will seem like romanticized existential ism. In middle age, Gold has really very little to say, except to keep some of his old fans up to date. To be fair, he admits to the modesty of his renewal. If only some of his overblown prose on the subject didn't lead the reader to think Otherwise.

. R. Z. Sheppard

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