Bohemia: Where Art, Angst, Love, and Strong Coffee Meet

In this idiosyncratic, meandering memoir, Gold ( Travels in San Francisco ) recounts his experiences in bohemias ranging from his adopted hometown, San Francisco, to New York City, Jerusalem and Paris. Gold offers anecdotes, not an anatomy, and his book is thin as a guide to such places as Greenwich Village and the Left Bank. Most noteworthy are those experiences involving literary figures: as a college freshman in 1943, Gold attended a party held by poets in New York and was nearly seduced by Anais Nin; in Paris some 15 years later, he looked on as novelist William Burroughs used a sink as a urinal. Gold is no romantic: in 1991, while he was visiting his three college-age children on Manhattan's Lower East Side, a stabbing nearby reminded him that their new bohemia ``is not one of pure gaiety and charm.'' Describing bohemia as ``an autonomous zone,'' he concludes that ``the world seems to need this moral ventilation system.'' (Apr.)