My brother Tod, while hyping our appearance this coming Sunday at the West Hollywood Book Festival, observes:
Other than Evel and Robbie Knievel, I have to believe the family with
the greatest genetic disposition toward one career must be mine.
Between just the four Goldberg siblings alone, we have something like
30 books. Now, granted, Lee has written about 25 of them, but he is
significantly older.
He’s only scratching the surface. My mother Jan Curran was a feature writer for the Palm Springs Desert Sun (among other newspapers), my father Alan Goldberg was a TV anchorman on KPIX (which, back in the day, actually involved some newswriting), my Uncle Burl Barer is writes true crime books (as well as the Edgar Award winning ‘The Saint: A Complete History"), my cousin Sam Barer is an auto industry columnist, and my great-cousin (I’m not sure that’s what he is…what would the son of my grandmother’s brother-in-law be??) David Zarkin was a newspaper reporter. I know I’m leaving some writerly family members out (I think that my grandmother’s brother may have written for Look magazine and know I have a distant cousin who writes for the New York Times). And most of them…at least the ones who are still living…have blogs, many of which you can find listed on the column to the left.
So, yeah, writing is definitely in our blood. Then again, so are the furniture, pelt, and scrap metal businesses…
Just thought of something I’d like to share that’s related to the topic. My father tells me about his cousin Earl Wallace, and how he cowrote the screenplay for ‘Witness’. Apparently he was a reporter for the Sacramento Bee before he married Sam Peckinpah’s daughter, and then made ‘Witness’. Never met the guy, Dad’s only met him once, but Dad talks about him sometimes, especially when he tells me I should write a story. Apparently writing’s in the blood on his side of the family, and he pushes me to continue with it. It’s strange hearing that from him, because he’s always been solely interested in agriculture and the military. You’d think that being who he is, he’d have no interest in seeing his son write. But he does. Anyway, just something I wanted to share.
tomato sauce and helping people take a ‘swim with the fishies’ is in MY blood.
but so is laziness.
so it evens out.
From the “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” files…my father (and Lee/Tod’s Mother’s first cousin,) Arny, was a writer and Motorsports Editor for Northwest Sports Car News back in the late 50s and early 60s. He recently returned to auto writing by getting a piece published in the LeMay Automobile Museum’s Open Road publication.
Arny is also an attorney, which is the other family profession. At last count, I think we had five or six of those!
Um, aren’t your sisters writers too?
The urge to stand out is universal in our family.
In addition, the Mighty Mouse theme was written by Marshal Barer, whom my Dad says is a distant relative.