D. G. K. Goldberg
D. G. K. Goldberg, often referred to as Kelly, was a multifaceted American writer and psychotherapist known for her unconventional and often humorous perspective on life. Born in the Deep South, she was a graduate of Coker College and earned a Master’s degree in social work from the University of Tennessee. Goldberg’s writing career spanned various genres; she published around five hundred articles on topics ranging from travel to mental health, and contributed to several "Chicken Soup for the Soul" anthologies.
Her literary works included more than seventy quirky short stories, such as "The Course of True Love" and "A Dybbuk in Dixie," which often reflected her experiences as an avid traveler. Goldberg's novels, "Skating on the Edge" and "Doomed to Repeat It," showcased her postmodernist style and satirical take on genres like Southern Gothic and paranormal romance. Known for her nonconformist personality, she expressed her unique sensibility through her writing and personal anecdotes. Goldberg passed away from lung cancer in 2005, leaving behind a legacy of thought-provoking and distinctive literature.
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Subject Terms
D. G. K. Goldberg
Author
- Born: Unknown
- Birthplace: Unknown
- Died: January 14, 2005
- Place of death: Charlotte, North Carolina
Biography
D. G. K. Goldberg, who preferred to render her byline in lower case letters, was known to her friends as Kelly. She was the daughter of Johnnie Goldberg and O. P. Goldberg. The person who recorded her death in Locus in 2005 was unable to ascertain the date or place of her birth—although it was certainly somewhere in the deep South—but noted that she attended Coker College and obtained a M.A. in social work from the University of Tennessee. In her youth, according to her Web site, “she hated almost everyone and did very well in school”—a pose further reflected in the fact that she titled her sporadically published online newsletter “The Daily Hate.”
Goldberg went into practice as a psychotherapist, but she also held casual jobs in bars and earned much of her income from freelance journalism. She published some five hundred articles on various subjects, including travel, business, and mental health. She contributed to several Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies. One of the contributors of the brief memorials appended to her Locus obituary estimated the number of her marriages at five or six—an impression encouraged by her habit of referring to her final husband, Ronald Shull, as a “spousal unit”; she was also survived by a son, Jacob David Goldberg. Her Web site maintained its image of an obsessive nonconformist with the aid of relentless flippancy, referring to her penchant for decapitating Barbie Dolls, her hatred of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and her strict avoidance of team sports and birthday parties.
Goldberg began publishing quirky short stories in 1998, and she had issued more than seventy by the time she died; notable examples of her early work included “The Course of True Love” and “A Dybbuk in Dixie.” She often drew upon her experiences as an inveterate traveler, and several of her stories were set abroad, such as “Tea in Kensington Gardens” (set in England) and “Lamed Vov” (set in Jerusalem). The latter story, which was inspired by the legend of thirty-six virtuous men for whose sake God generously refrains from obliterating the human race, is a graphic representation of Goldberg’s distinctive sensibility.
Goldberg’s two novels were strikingly unusual. Skating on the Edge (2001) is an eclectically chimerical text whose rich admixture of materials is quintessentially postmodernist; its plot subverts quest-fantasy conventions by celebrating the perversity that dooms its central mission to eventual failure. A similarly cynical spirit is evident in Doomed to Repeat It (2001), which employs the ambience of Southern Gothic fiction in a satiric fashion to offer a deeply skeptical and scathingly hilarious version of the emergent hybrid subgenre of “paranormal romance.” The unpublished book “Wrong Turns” offers a representative sampler of her short fabulations. Always a heavy smoker, Goldberg died of lung cancer on January 14, 2005, in Charlotte, North Carolina.