Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Joseph Mitchell’s and Joe Gould’s Secret

Never meet your heroes

It’s still a helluva read, but...
It’s still a helluva read, but...

I started writing for the Reader 25 years ago; Joseph Mitchell is one of the big reasons why I wanted to do so. The summer before my senior year of college, I visited Thidwick’s Books in Ithaca, New York and happened upon a used copy of Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of Mitchell’s long, beguiling, quote-laden, and detail-rich profiles for The New Yorker magazine. The first was a portrait of McSorley’s Saloon from 1940; the last, Mitchell’s second profile of a New York eccentric named Joe Gould, dated 1964. In the author’s note at the outset, dated 1992, Mitchell wrote, “Joe Gould’s Secret is factual.” He wrote the same of his first Gould profile, Professor Sea Gull, written in 1942.

Sponsored
Sponsored

Joe Gould said otherwise; he wrote a friend that Sea Gull was “about ten per cent accurate.” Jill Lepore said otherwise, too. Lepore is a professor of history at Harvard and a prolific author. In 2015, she published her own lengthy profile of Gould in The New Yorker, one that paid more attention to the man’s mental illness: his obsession with race (he stalked a black sculptress in the name of love and seethed against Jews), his sexual misbehavior, his institutionalization and likely eventual lobotomy. She wrote that while Gould was in the asylum, he was visited by two Harvard Crimson writers. “They reported, ‘One of these days, someone is going to write an article on Joseph Ferdinand Gould ’11 for the Reader’s Digest. It will be entitled “The Most Unforgettable Character I Have Met,” and it will present Joe Gould as an unusual but lovable old man. Joe Gould is not a lovable old man.’” They were right about the last bit, but they got the title and the publication wrong.

Joe Gould’s Secret is a defense of invention,” Lepore wrote, either oblivious or uncaring as to the way my journalistic guts were spilling all over the floor. “Mitchell took something that wasn’t beautiful, the sorry fate of a broken man, and made it beautiful — a fable about art. Joe Gould’s Secret is the best story many people have ever read. Its truth is, in a Keatsian sense, its beauty; it’s beauty, truth.” Lovely and accurate, except there’s that stubborn word from the author in 1992: factual. The word that won me over to this whole doomed and glorious weekly newspaper business. I believed Mitchell had found his man and shown him whole. More fool me.

Mitchell’s fable about art concerns Gould’s Oral History, an attempt to paint a picture of the times by recording the way people talked in those times —much like Mitchell himself. Gould said, “In time to come, people may read Gould’s Oral History to see what went wrong with us, the way we read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall to see what went wrong with the Romans.” Mitchell wrote that the History never existed; later, he found out that it did. He made no correction. He published nothing further, except maybe for that fateful, painful Author’s Note.

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Dia de los Muertos Celebration, Love Thy Neighbor(Hood): Food & Art Exploration

Events November 2-November 6, 2024
It’s still a helluva read, but...
It’s still a helluva read, but...

I started writing for the Reader 25 years ago; Joseph Mitchell is one of the big reasons why I wanted to do so. The summer before my senior year of college, I visited Thidwick’s Books in Ithaca, New York and happened upon a used copy of Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of Mitchell’s long, beguiling, quote-laden, and detail-rich profiles for The New Yorker magazine. The first was a portrait of McSorley’s Saloon from 1940; the last, Mitchell’s second profile of a New York eccentric named Joe Gould, dated 1964. In the author’s note at the outset, dated 1992, Mitchell wrote, “Joe Gould’s Secret is factual.” He wrote the same of his first Gould profile, Professor Sea Gull, written in 1942.

Sponsored
Sponsored

Joe Gould said otherwise; he wrote a friend that Sea Gull was “about ten per cent accurate.” Jill Lepore said otherwise, too. Lepore is a professor of history at Harvard and a prolific author. In 2015, she published her own lengthy profile of Gould in The New Yorker, one that paid more attention to the man’s mental illness: his obsession with race (he stalked a black sculptress in the name of love and seethed against Jews), his sexual misbehavior, his institutionalization and likely eventual lobotomy. She wrote that while Gould was in the asylum, he was visited by two Harvard Crimson writers. “They reported, ‘One of these days, someone is going to write an article on Joseph Ferdinand Gould ’11 for the Reader’s Digest. It will be entitled “The Most Unforgettable Character I Have Met,” and it will present Joe Gould as an unusual but lovable old man. Joe Gould is not a lovable old man.’” They were right about the last bit, but they got the title and the publication wrong.

Joe Gould’s Secret is a defense of invention,” Lepore wrote, either oblivious or uncaring as to the way my journalistic guts were spilling all over the floor. “Mitchell took something that wasn’t beautiful, the sorry fate of a broken man, and made it beautiful — a fable about art. Joe Gould’s Secret is the best story many people have ever read. Its truth is, in a Keatsian sense, its beauty; it’s beauty, truth.” Lovely and accurate, except there’s that stubborn word from the author in 1992: factual. The word that won me over to this whole doomed and glorious weekly newspaper business. I believed Mitchell had found his man and shown him whole. More fool me.

Mitchell’s fable about art concerns Gould’s Oral History, an attempt to paint a picture of the times by recording the way people talked in those times —much like Mitchell himself. Gould said, “In time to come, people may read Gould’s Oral History to see what went wrong with us, the way we read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall to see what went wrong with the Romans.” Mitchell wrote that the History never existed; later, he found out that it did. He made no correction. He published nothing further, except maybe for that fateful, painful Author’s Note.

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Gonzo Report: Goose may have indie vibes, but they’re still a jam band

Fans turn out in force for show at SDSU
Next Article

Big swordfish, big marlin, and big money

Trout opener at Santee Lakes
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader