Guest post written by The Great Gimmelmans author Lee Matthew Goldberg
Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of twelve novels including The Ancestor and The Mentor along with his five-book Desire Card series. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the Prix du Polar. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in numerous publications. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City. Follow him at LeeMatthewGoldberg.com
Releasing November 14th 2023, The Great Gimmelmans follows the Gimmelmans who lose all their money in the 1987 Stock Market Crash, so Barry Gimmelman takes his family in their vacation RV for a wild ride through America that leads to them becoming the most notorious bank robbers of the era.
I was a little kid during the 1980s, probably one of the best times to grow up. We didn’t have to worry about social media, and weren’t glued to cell phones or TikTok—our childhoods needed to be fueled with creativity. I think of epic battles I played with friends over G.I. Joe and Transformers and Star Wars that went on for weeks and definitely helped foster my adult career as a writer. We were latch-key kids whose parents both worked for the first time in history, raised by the television and shows like Growing Pains, Who’s the Boss, and Miami Vice to be our babysitters. A lot of my work has been influenced by books and films of that era, a time when commercialism mixed with innovation across channels of video games, movies, music, and literature.
I was way too young to read Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, a drug-haze binge featuring a guy working in finance in New York City and written in the second person. Same goes for Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero and Donna Tartt’s Secret History, some of my favorite books to this day. This was before a Young Adult section existed in the bookstore, so I was reading books ahead of my time, but I also grew up in midtown Manhattan, so the world swirling around me forced me to grow up faster as well. I watched films like Terminator and Gremlins, Time Bandits and Tron on Beta and VHS tapes because my dad was a huge movie buff and made copies of every film. Special effects were getting better, making films like these even more believable. Rewatch Terminator 2 and tell me that the special effects thirty years ago don’t look just as good as today. I learned “Greed is Good” from Wall Street, suicide is bad from Heathers, Number 5 is alive from Short Circuit, “Snap out of it” from Moonstruck, Atreyu from The Neverending Story, the piano intro from Beverly Hills Cop, how to cut school from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, how to hold a boombox from Say Anything, how to travel back in time from Back to the Future, who I’m gonna call from Ghostbusters, Goonies forever from Goonies, the highway to the danger zone from Top Gun, a leeches phobia from Stand By Me, not to put baby in the corner from Dirty Dancing, how to get rid of Nazis from Indiana Jones, and how to do detention right from The Breakfast Club. One of my first memories is seeing E.T. on vacation in Montauk at two years old and crying at the end while being carried out from the theater by my dad.
The music was a mix of pop perfection from Tiffany and Debbie Gibson and Whitney Houston, new wave artists like Depeche Mode, The Cure, and New Order, and superstars like Michael Jackson and Madonna. Everyone had either Michael Jackson’s glove or Madonna’s and knew all the words to “Man in the Mirror” or “La Isla Bonita.”
It was the first time that children were seen as a marketing tool. Tons of commercials focused on the toys of the era. Light-Brite and My Little Pony, Nerf and He-Man and She-Ra, Lazer Tag and Speak and Spell. Toys R’ Us exploded during that time, giant stores catering to a new generation and their parents’ pockets. A lot of the Marvel movies we watch today came from stories in the comic books from that era. I remember getting my allowance money and running down to Forbidden Planet in Union Square to buy the latest X-Men, which was my favorite.
Video games were a huge part of childhood too. Atari and Nintendo, Sega Genesis and going to arcades. I’d spend hours with friends after school playing Super Mario Bros and Contra, Metroid and Mega Man. I had a Commodore 64 and a million games that you’d have to key in a super long code to boot up. I loved any racing games like Spy Hunter and Rad Racer and sports games like Ice Hockey, Blades of Steel, and Tecmo Bowl.
It was why I wanted to set my latest novel The Great Gimmelmans in the 1980s. Originally, the idea I had took place in the 1930s during the Great Depression and it was a grim tale about a family of bank robbers that lose all their money in the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Something kept me from writing the book, and it was because I didn’t want to create such a serious tale. So, I switched the novel to the fallout from the 1987 Stock Market, infused with the music from the era. While it’s still a thrilling story, it mixes humor and pathos a lot better than had it been set in the ‘30s. There’s a scene where the characters pause from robbing banks out of their RV (the only thing of theirs not repossessed) and go to a Tiffany and Debbie Gibson mall concert in Louisiana. It’s a moment that could only take place in the 1980s and a crucial scene that brings the family closer together while they take a break from their criminal endeavors. A main character of the book is clearly the 1980s itself, since it would have completely been a different book had it occurred any other time.
There was an element of innocence in the 1980s that we don’t have anymore. Yes, the world seemed to be falling apart, like it does during any time. But there wasn’t a constant stream of news like there is now. You read the newspaper or watched the nightly news. The end. You weren’t updated every minute with every terrible thing happening around the world and everyone’s thoughts on that terrible thing. If you wanted to reach someone you had to give a call, and if they weren’t home, you needed to wait for a response for them to call back. Something that seems like an alien concept now. Or you could write a letter, since there was no email. In work situations, once the day ended the work was done, since you couldn’t be reached in a million ways like you can now. It was a simpler, more peaceful time that will never be recreated again, and I think that’s why I was drawn to setting a book in that era.
The ‘80s ended when I was twelve, old enough to be more aware and less innocent, but so much from that era has inspired my work now. I’m thankful I had a childhood exposed to all the great things from the ‘80s, and I’m still working my way through the films, and books, and music I may have missed. A lot can happen in ten years, and since I was so young, there’s a lot I need to catch up on.
Maybe I’ll delve into more if I ever write a sequel to The Great Gimmelmans, set right at the decade’s end.
