["Streets of Gold" is a] pop epic that takes the form of a family history and autobiography by Iggie Di Palermo—in later years known as Dwight Jamison—a blind jazz pianist who rises from a New York slum and attains stardom briefly in the fifties and sixties…. At times, Iggie speaks of the confusion of someone who has exchanged his ethnic past for an Anglicized "American" illusion; since Mr. Hunter is also of Italian blood, the book can be read as a disguised search for the author's own roots. The scenes of tenement life are warm, witty, and accurate-sounding, yet tend toward coarseness and violence…. When we come to Iggie's decline, which hinges on a bit of standard adultery, the familiarity of his story becomes really depressing. Yet much of the book has a definite personal stamp, and its evocations of jazz—of a "jump into water...