Monday, August 17. 1998
The University Daily Kansan
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Section A·Page 11
Storytelling professor writes of travels, academia
Humorous tales define Joel Gold as a storyteller
By Duane Wagler
Kansan staff writer
For Joel J. Gold, writing and telling humorous stories is a matter of self-definition.
"Humor is an essential factor in the way I see everything," he savs.
Gold sees himself as a storyteller, which he said allows him to connect with others. His material comes from his life in academia and travel.
"I feel very comfortable looking at the world around me and seeing what is funny and thinking that if I get the words right, I can make other people see it that way, too," he savs.
Gold, a professor of English, is in the second year of a three-year phased retirement that has him teaching one class of narrative humor this fall. Yet Gold has not always relished the label of storyteller.
in the beginning of his book "The Wayward Professor," published in 1989, Gold recounts the time in the mid-1960s when he read a paper at a conference about 18th-century studies. His talk dealt with the radical politics of John Glynn, a defender of left-wing causes in George III's England.
"I had laid out the talk, as I usually do, to interest the audience — some facts about the man, followed by an account of events, sprinkled with courtroom dialogue from contemporary magazines and newspapers, and a verbatim account of a specific trial," he writes. "I wanted to show Glynn in action."
Then came the moment.
Gold continues:"A man in the third row stood up and
announced: 'The papers on the French Revolution and on the Dutch Republic were excellent, but I have something to say to Professor Gold.'
Gold braced for the worst.
"You know what you are?" the man asked, pausing dramatically.
Although he had no idea what the man was going to say next, Gold worried that his fledgling academic career might be in jeopardy.
Gold continues: "My assassin went on. 'You,' he said, 'are a storyeller.'
Gold first thought that the speaker had said that to belittle him, but he later found out that his colleague had loved the presentation.
Thirty years and many humorous essays and columns later, Gold points to the event as clarifying his role.
"It seems to me that was a moment when I said, "That's what I do—I tell stories." Gold says.
He has been telling stories ever since — in the classroom, articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education, columns in The Lawrence Journal-World, radio commentaries on Armed Forces Radio and in the English department office.
Don Warders, former professor of English, spent more than 30 years as Gold's colleague before retiring last year.
Warders says there is a remarkable consistency between Gold's written voice and his personality.
"The voice that I hear in his pieces — in his essays — is the voice I was familiar with every day around the office." Warders says.
Childhood acquaintances might not have characterized Gold that way. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., Gold says he was quiet until he went to the University of Missouri to study journalism.
"I was very shy and retiring before I got out of high school," he says. "When I got out of college, there was a kind of transformation and step into the new world. I
began to see that I could make people laugh.
Gold honed his talent by editing Showme, a campus humor magazine, while at Missouri. He decided not to pursue a journalism degree and instead earned a degree in sociology with an emphasis in creative writing.
After graduation, Gold wrote ad copy at an advertising agency in Detroit for two years.
Gold says that this experience helped him realize the importance of conciseness.
"It was the only job I was offered," he says.
"It made me a better narrative writer," he savs.
Gold quit the advertising agency and sold pharmaceuticals for a year in Detroit. He then went to Indiana University and earned his doctorate in English in 1962 before teaching later the same year at the University of Kansas.
His scholarly work tended to be biographical and historical, further allowing the narrative bud to flower.
Travel also has encouraged his narrative voice to blossom. Combining research grants and sabbaticals, Gold has traveled and researched in Europe — mostly in London — for more than five of the past 25 years.
"He's probably our champion England-goer," says Richard Hardin, chairman of the English Department.
Travel tales provided about a third of the Wayward Professor." Gold's latest book, "Wayward Traveler in Britain,"—now waiting with a publisher—has about 25 stories of an American's perspective of life in Britain.
Whether he writes about haggling with British customs officers or adventures in navigating British roads, Gold concedes that he takes literary license in some of his stories.
"I usually say it's 87 to 92 percent
true, but I've sort of forgotten which is which," he says, grinning.
Creating a quote, after all, may enhance the story.
"In some of the things that I write, I take liberties with what people are saying." Gold says. "My assumption would be, 'If they didn't say that, they should have said that.'"
Gold generally feels more comfortable with gentle and prodding humor rather than satire.
"I've been accused of writing satire," he says, "I have denied that because satire is basically an attack."
But Gold's stories about academia can be more than poking fun. Gold says that a piece he especially enjoyed writing was about Cliff Hillegass, the man who produces Cliffs Notes.
One exception, Gold says, is an April Lawrence Journal - World column he wrote parodying the alumni newsletter of fictitious Parоль State.
"What struck me is myself, there as an English professor, talking to the man who had produced the thing that is the bane of all English professors — those yellow and black Cliffs Notes," he says.
"I'm taking a known form — the alumni newsletter — and turning it inside-out and making fun of it," he savs.
Gold says that the interview served as a catalyst for a better understanding of himself and Cliff Hillegass.
"It was not just the interview, but it was my own involvement in it, that I was connected with it," he says.
Perhaps Gold's involvement with his own work explains the link he makes with his readers and students.
Amanda DeVoy, Lawrence, has taken two of Gold's classes. She says that Gold uses humor to
Illustrations by Vivian S. Hixson
The Wayward Professor, written by Joel J. Gold, was published in 1989. Gold, professor of English, is nearing retirement. Contributed art.
enhance his lectures.
"His humor tends to make you see things in different perspectives," she says.
Gold likes the connection that a well-timed narrative in the classroom makes with students.
"I am aware that when I tell a relevant story about what I'm teaching, the students kind of sit up just a little bit more because we're engaged in something that appeals to them," he says.
Gold says he thinks that society in general is beginning to sit up
and take notice of storytelling in a new way as well.
"When you can get a Garrison Keillor and give him a two-hour program and have this go on for 13 to 14 years — stopped only because he gets tired of doing it for awhile — I think you're witnessing a rebirth," he says.
Joel J. Gold is doing his part in that rebirth — telling humorous stories, making connections.
"If I do it right, I'll have other people saying, 'Yes, that's what it's like,' Gold says.