Joseph Ferdinand Gould (1889-1957) was an American writer, eccentric, and bum.
Gould was born in a small suburb outside Boston. In 1911, he graduated from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in Literature, even though his family wanted him to become a physician. He traveled to Canada, exploring its landscape, and then came back to Boston. In 1915, he did field work for the Eugenics Record Office in Spring Harbor. He then went to North Dakota to study the Chippewa’s and Mandan’s culture. He gained respect for their culture and he also learned how to ride horses, dance, and sing.
When 1917 came, he went to New York and worked as a reporter for the Evening Mail. This is when he had his epiphany for the longest book ever written. He would title this book An Oral History of Our Time. The book was to be a record of his wanderings and philosphizing, but, more importantly, it was the record of all the things he had heard people say during those wanderings. It was to be what he called “the informal history of the shirt-sleeved multitude.” According to his account, the book was written in multiple children’s composition notebooks, and exceeded 9,000,000 words. He claimed that the notebooks containing his opus were given to various friends and patrons for safe keeping
Gould live a marginal existence on the fringes of Greenwich Village. He lived off the generosity of both friends and strangers, who made contributions to what he referred to as “the Joe Gould fund.” Most nights were spent in flophouses, and he generally dined in cheap, West Side cafes on such fare as ketchup consomme. He was a minor local character who claimed to be able to speak sea gull, and crashed Raven’s Poetry Club readings and Village parties.
Gould came to the attention of writer Joseph Mitchell, who wrote a celebrated profile of him titled ‘Professor Sea Gull’ that was published in the New Yorker. The piece brought Joe unexpected fame, and mobs of tourists and returning GI s found their way to his haunt at Minetta café to pay their respects. A Joe Gould Club was founded in Manila, and young scholars in Harvard Yard considered him as a hero. He was befriended by Eugene O'Neill, e.e. cummings, illustrator Don Freeman (who drew his portrait) and many others. Gould was pleased with the attention, the press snapping his picture, and the increased contributions to the Joe Gould fund, but was not deluded about his popularity. He remarked to a friend that it was based largely on “my special brand of foolishness.”
But despite his notoriety, most people still considered him just a bum. He was not in good physical condition, and was prone to blackouts. He eventually lost the support of the anonymous patron who had occasionally helped him, and wound up wandering the streets until he was committed to Pilgrim State Hospital, where he died. His funeral was attended by representatives from NBC, CBS, and the print media, as well as by neighborhood characters, and the Lions Club of Greater Greenwich Village. No headstone marks his grave at Ferncliff Cemetery.
In 1964, Joseph Mitchell published a two piece story in the New Yorker titled ‘Joe Gould’s Secret,’ in which he revealed that Gould had duped him about his monumental work ‘An Oral History of Our Time’. The famous work did not exist – something Mitchell figured out after introducing Gould to several publishers who were interested in it. Mitchell confronted Gould with the truth, to which his only reply was, “it’s not a question of laziness.” (This fact, at least, was bourn out by the discovery of Gould’s diaries, which cover some 1100 pages, and consist chiefly of the minutia of his daily existence.) ‘Joe Gould’s Secret’ was Mitchell’s masterpiece, and was the last he would ever write, despite the fact that he continued to work at the New Yorker for another 32 years.

In Winter I'm a Buddhist - in Summer I'm a Nudist!

read a sample of Joe Gould's writing
one of Gould's diary notebooks
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