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Joe Gould’s Secret, Joseph Mitchell
I don’t know if people were simply more gullible in the New York City of the nineteen-forties and fifties or if my easy cynicism has finally paid off in actual enlightenment, but I guessed Joe Gould’s “secret” long before the author himself discovered it. Gould seems to have been an intolerable person – a willful eccentric, a drunkard, suspicious and needy, suffering from delusions of grandeur. The last (perhaps) of the old Village bohemians, he claimed to be writing an Oral History of the age more than nine-million words long. He also claimed to be able to translate Longfellow poems into the language of seagulls. Gould’s charms, if you grant that he had any, quickly wear off. But something a little magical happens about two-thirds of the way through this book. I began to like Mitchell and to want to hear more from…
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Viv Drewa - The Owl Lady 