Meet Eric Gordon

Today we’d like to introduce you to Eric Gordon.

Eric, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
After I completed my doctoral dissertation (in Latin American history), I dedicated the next ten years off and on to researching the first biography of radical American composer Marc Blitzstein, and in the meantime started a career of freelance writing. Two more books followed Blitzstein, and hundreds of reviews, opinion pieces, autobiographical vignettes, travelogues, news articles, and translations. I’ve been a member of the National Writers Union Local 1981/UAW (AFL-CIO) since 1988 and was its SoCal Chair for two terms. I am currently living my journalistic dreams as a staff writer and copy editor for the online newspaper People’s World.

Along the way I’ve done other things, too: I was SoCal Director of The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring, a progressive secular Jewish organization, where I also instituted and ran an art gallery that mounted about 100 different exhibitions; executive directed a CD called “City of the Future: Yiddish Songs from the former Soviet Union”; and became a marriage and ceremonial officiant endorsed by The Humanist Society and the Secular Jewish Yeshiva. For Los Angeles County, 2014-2018, I officiated at ca. 1500 marriages.

Has it been a smooth road?
The main issue for me as a writer was always how to make it a career capable of sustaining myself–thus a number of “day jobs” I took to pay the rent. Now that I am older, I can offer this piece of advice: Think carefully about going the freelancer/independent artist route, because without a steady paycheck you may be prejudicing your future earnings from Social Security. Sounds very conventional, I know, but it’s a consideration.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I write mostly about culture and arts from a politically leftwing point of view. I am not so interested in the performance as such as I am in the social context of the work–what it says about society, the human condition, our future, the choices we make (and don’t). Clearly, I am not the only socially conscious cultural reporter in the country, but I feel I am leaving a body of work behind me (much of it accessible on the Internet) which aims to set a standard for how we critique our culture. My agenda is to advance democracy and inclusion. I consider myself a socialist.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Well, first of all, I have to acknowledge my parents, who not only raised me with humanistic values and an appreciation for cultural expression of many kinds, but who in some rough patches of my life also supported me financially out of their belief in my capabilities. I am also grateful to a mentor who appeared early in my life (at age 12), Betty Millard, who was an editor at The New Masses magazine in the late 1940s and introduced me to the struggles going on in Latin America, leading me to become a Latin American Studies major in college and graduate school. My Spanish and Portuguese that I studied then have served me well over the years. Other than a few influential teachers, I would recognize the collective process which I enjoyed from time to time (and now on People’s World) of putting out a journalistic endeavor together, helping one another, filling in for others in sometimes less familiar, comfortable roles, and taking pride in awards and recognition that we earned as a team.

Pricing:

• Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein” (original hardback $40, paperback reprint $30)
• Ballad of an American: The Autobiography of Earl Robinson” cowritten with me, hardback $20
• City of the Future: Yiddish Songs from the Former Soviet Union,” CD, $20. All titles available from me.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]

Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.