Joe Gould's Secret by Joseph Mitchell

Author:Joseph Mitchell [Mitchell, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784876227
Publisher: Random House

The profile of Gould was printed in the issue of The New Yorker for December 12, 1942, under the title of ‘Professor Sea Gull.’ The day before this issue went on the newsstands, I had to go down South, because of the sickness of a relative. I ran into some bad luck down there – I was thrown from a horse jumping a ditch and dislocated a shoulder, and while I was laid up from that I had pneumonia – and it was over three weeks before I returned to New York City, it was after the first of the year, in fact. When I got back to my office, there was a pile of letters on my desk from readers of the Profile. There were forty-five addressed to me, and seventeen addressed to Gould in care of me. Among the letters addressed to me was one from Gould himself.

‘I have always had a feeling of being way ahead of my time,’ Gould wrote. ‘Consequently, I have always taken it for granted that the importance of the Oral History would not be recognized until sometime in the distant future, long after I am dead and gone, but now, thanks to your little piece, I am beginning to see signs that it may happen in my own lifetime. Strangers passing me on the street used to look at me with reactions ranging from bafflement to outright hostility, but now a steadily increasing number of them seem to know who I am and look at me with respect, and every now and then one of them stops me and ask questions about the Oral History. Serious and sensible questions. And people who really know me and have known me from old are beginning to look at me in a different light. I’m not just that nut Joe Gould but that nut Joe Gould who may wind up being considered one of the great historians of all time. As great as Froissart. As great as John Aubrey. As great as Gibbon. I have even noticed a change in the Village radicals. One of them who has been cutting me dead for a long time spoke to me the other day. He was patronizing, but he spoke. “I know that you don’t intend any such thing,” he said, “but the Oral History may very well turn out to be a sort of X-ray of the soul of the bourgeoisie.” “What makes you think you know what I don’t intend?” I asked him. It may also interest you to learn that the countermen and waitresses in the Jefferson Diner have begun to kid around with me again. When I go in there now, they call me the Professor or the Sea Gull or Professor Sea Gull or the Mongoose or Professor Mongoose or the Bellevue Boy, just as they used to, and I don’t know why, but that pleases me. Sometimes, when they are kidding around, ignorant people like that have a kind of inspired audacity that is very cheerful and infectious.

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