Joe Gould's Teeth

March 21, 2016
This disjointed true-life detective tale from Lepore (The Secret History of Wonder Woman) digs into the story of Joe Gould, a Greenwich Village eccentric who was introduced to the world by Joseph Mitchell’s 1942 New Yorker profile, “Professor Sea Gull.” Gould befriended a group of artist and writers that included E.E. Cummings and Ezra Pound, and told anyone who would listen that he was writing a book entitled The Oral History of Our Time. In 1964, following Gould’s 1957 death in a mental hospital, Mitchell wrote what was to be his last New Yorker profile, “Joe Gould’s Secret,” which cast doubt on the existence of the Oral History. The ever-curious and intrepid Lepore sets out to discover whether Gould did indeed ever write a word of his oral history, digging deep into New York University and Harvard archives and leafing through the more than 800 surviving pages of Gould’s diary. Lepore never finds definitive evidence, but the more she learns, the uglier the story gets—including Gould’s fascination with “race pride” and his harassment of African-American sculptor Augusta Savage. She speculates that Gould’s friends contrived his endearing persona as an attempt to save him from institutionalization. Lepore’s book, which itself originated as a New Yorker article, unfortunately comes across as thin and overstretched, and its subject is unlovable and unsympathetic.

March 15, 2016
A writer searches for a "holy grail" manuscript of endless words. This extended essay by New Yorker staff writer Lepore (The Secret History of Wonder Woman, 2014, etc.), originally published in the magazine last year, is about a wild goose chase and missing dentures. Joseph Ferdinand Gould (1889-1957), aka Professor Seagull, first became a public figure thanks to New Yorker staff writer Joseph Mitchell. His two essays about Gould were published together as Joe Gould's Secret (1964), which was made into a movie in 2000. The "secret" was his mysterious manuscript, an extensively detailed personal biography/history that was millions of words long and 7 feet high. Lepore describes his Oral History of Our Times as "plainspoken, arresting, experimental, and disordered...endless, and unremitting." She wonders: "It didn't exist. Or did it?" Gould was an eccentric, probably autistic, she believes, who "suffered from gramaphobia"--"he could not stop writing." Often homeless, drunk, or ill, he required little but had friends--Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and others--who would help him out. His close friend, e.e cummings, wrote of him: "b jeezuz, never have I beheld a corpse walking." Like a detective, Lepore describes her mazelike quest, her clues, her dead ends, the many people she met and talked to, the dusty archives visited in a wonderful, sprightly prose lusciously filled with allusions and references. Questions abound. The search led her to a key figure in the Gould mystery: Augusta Savage, an African-American artist who lived in Harlem. Gould knew her and apparently even proposed to her. Could he have given her the manuscript? Borges' great short story about the fictional writer Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote, comes to mind. Lepore is Borges to Gould's Quixote, which was his life writ large...maybe. A fascinating, sharply written, thoroughly engaging jeu d'esprit.

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April 1, 2016

Lepore (David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History, Harvard Univ.; staff writer, The New Yorker; The Secret History of Wonder Woman) tells the story of Joe Gould (1889-1957), a curious footnote of the American modernist literary movement, who long claimed to be working on a nine-million-word text, The Oral History of Our Time. Lepore's engaging book charts her adventures tracking down information about Gould and her fruitless search for the unpublished manuscripts (if they ever even existed). What emerges is the tale of a man from an important New England family who made friends and supporters (such as E.E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound) just as quickly as he made enemies and alienated people. In the pages of The New Yorker, Joseph Mitchell elevated the Oral History to mythical status. Though renowned by the intelligentsia, Gould participated in the eugenics movement and sexually harassed women, including Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage. Lepore's ultimately sad account touches on racism, sexism, alcoholism, and how America's mental health institutions failed Gould, possibly subjecting him to a lobotomy and electroconvulsive therapy. VERDICT This book will delight readers interested in the people's history of literary modernism. [See Prepub Alert, 2/21/16.]--Brian Flota, James Madison Univ., Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2016
Intrepid historian and commanding writer Lepore (The Secret History of Wonder Woman, 2014) investigates the troubling story behind two celebrated New Yorker profiles by staff writer Joseph Mitchell about Joe Gould (18891957), a legendary, indigent eccentric who was taken up by the likes of e. e. cummings and Ezra Pound and who claimed to be writing a massive, groundbreaking book, The Oral History of Our Time. His mission was to write down nearly everything anyone ever said to him, especially in Harlem, in the belief, as he explained, that the average person is just as much history as the ruler or celebrity. Mitchell concluded that Gould's manuscript didn't exist, that the project was mere fantasy, an assertion Lepore decided to challenge. Securing access to newly available archives, she discovered the sad and unsettling truth about Gould's struggles, Mitchell's failings, and the toxicity of their relationship. As she tracks Gould, born to a prominent family, to Harvard, bars, and psych wards, she unveils his disturbing fixation on sex and race, and casts light on two fascinating women, Augusta Savage, an African American artist with whom Gould was dangerously obsessed, and his secret benefactor, psychiatrist Muriel Morris Gardiner. A well-aimed hand grenade of a book, fiercely concentrated in its precision and unflinching in its revelations. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Lepore's exciting approach to hidden and scandalous historical stories is drawing an enthusiastic, ever-growing readership that will be well primed for this thoughtful expose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)