Avon Calling

By Andrea Sachs Sunday, Apr. 21, 2002
    • When book editor Herman Gollob finally put down his blue pencil in 1995--having spent more than 35 years polishing the works of such authors as Donald Barthelme, James Clavell, Arthur Hailey, Alex Haley, Bill Moyers and Leon Uris--he had the usual fuzzy plans for retirement. He imagined, as many of us do, that he would simply dive into the pile of books he had never read, the videos he had never watched, the CDs he had never heard.

    But then something strange happened. A few weeks before retiring, Gollob went to see a performance of Hamlet starring Ralph Fiennes, the Oscar-nominated actor best known for playing an SS officer in Schindler's List. There was something about the production--its pace and precision--that Gollob found "galvanizing." It whetted his appetite for more Shakespeare. He started reading plays and watching pbs videotapes. Before long, his curiosity had grown into a full-blown obsession--and a new way of life, as Gollob explains in his book, Me and Shakespeare: Adventures with the Bard (Doubleday; $26), to be published in May.


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    A few weeks ago, sitting at the Judson Grill, a sleek New York City hangout for publishing types, Gollob, 71, reflected on the path that has taken him on scholarly jaunts to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, to Oxford University and even to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace. His interest in the Bard is only intensifying, the Houston-born Gollob says with a Texas twang. "You read Shakespeare like you read the Bible," he says. "Because he's rich in ambiguity, you find something new each time you read him, something you've missed."

    Intent on sharing what he has discovered, Gollob drives every Wednesday morning to Caldwell College, a small Catholic school in Montclair, N.J., to teach, gratis, a course for students he describes as "50 years old and better--retired doctors, lawyers, teachers, housewives."

    Shakespeare has special resonance for older students, Gollob says. "We've experienced life. We've raised families. We've learned a profession. We've earned a living. We've been hired, fired, promoted, passed over. We've survived chemotherapy and heart attacks. So we have the experience to bring to Shakespeare."

    An energetic man with an infectious enthusiasm for his new passion, Gollob is well aware that many readers remember Shakespeare with a sense of obligation and even dread. Not the right mind-set, says Gollob. "Shakespeare didn't write for intellectuals. He wrote for a large popular audience who wanted to be entertained, moved. They wanted to laugh and cry, and that's what he gave them."

    Alas, Gollob in his own writing sometimes errs on the side of erudition. Still, his book is valuable for its passionate view of Shakespeare and its account of Gollob's intriguing life. Having come to New York City to work in the theater, Gollob ended up with a coveted job in book publishing. In the beginning, writes Gollob, his career was "an adventure in the exciting and political New York literary scene, crackling with suspense." But by the time he was ready to retire, he recalls, "a certain weariness had begun to overtake me. In fact, I'd begun to resemble my briefcase--outside, battered and worn; inside, musty and cluttered."

    It was sheer luck that he stumbled on the Bard of Avon when he did, says Gollob. What advice does he have for seniors who want to stay as intellectually engaged as he has? "Take as many courses as you possibly can," he says. "Find adult-education courses. Audit college courses if possible. This may sound frivolous, but get into it not so much for the profundity but just to have a good time." After all, as Shakespeare put it, "the play's the thing."