Rating: 
Summary: Get "Up in The Old Hotel" instead
Review: I want to like this book. I really do. Joseph Mitchell is a terrific writer. His descriptions of old-time New York evoke a time and place long gone. His long, evocative sentences are extraordinary. His affection for Joe Gould is obvious and somewhat infectious. The old man, Gould, is a genuine character, the kind you don't see much in today's newspapers or magazines.There's a reason. The story, like Joe, goes on too long. As a profile of a strange, intelligent but dirty old man, it starts wonderfully. But after page upon page upon page of Joe's same old harrangue, it gets tiresome. More Mitchell and less Gould would have been better. Still, if this book leads you to one much better -- "Up In The Old Hotel" -- that's good. In fact, "Hotel" contains the entire Gould story, plus many other, much better tales of old New York. That's the book to get. Mitchell is a fabulous scene setter. He puts his talents to better use in the shorter non-fiction stories. As long as you can pick up "Up In The Old Hotel," which contains "Joe Gould's Secret" in its entirety, there is no reason to get this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Mitchell is a wonderful writer
Review: In hindsight, I am a bit shy to admit that I first learned of Joseph Mitchell through the made-for-TV version of this story. Trusting that the story would be better in print than on screen, like so many books, I was pleased to find that Mitchell's account of Joe Gould made for an excellent read. Mitchell is a superb writer in my view. I have read few authors who are able to write nonfiction in such an eloquent and moving fashion. Beyond his technical skills, Mitchell also tells the story of Joe Gould. Gould is an eccentric Bohemian living in the Village during the 20s, 30s, and 40s. Mitchell one day decides to explore Gould's life and profile him in The New Yorker. Gould's profile appears in two forms. The first is "Professor Sea Gull" which appeared in 1942, and the second is "Joe Gould's Secret" which was published in 1964. As we read through the two accounts, we see and feel Mitchell's attraction to the eccentric Gould, his frustrations, his discovery of--and about--Gould's "Oral History," and his patience and compassion as Gould's fellow man. In the end, I think we are left with a book that is much a profile of Gould as it is of Mitchell. I certainly would have enjoyed having a martini and watching these two interact one evening. Since that is not possible, I am pleased that we have Mitchell's account which is good enough to make me think about and want such opportunties. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I have.
Rating:
Summary: I fell in love with Joe Gould
Review: It is rare to find a book such as Joe Gould's Secret and even rarer still that through reading it, one would fall in love with such a irritating, grubby, vile little man as Gould. But love it was - certainly not at first sight but as I began to learn his history and then finally his secret, my heart just gave way. Joe Gould was a well known "vagrant" in New York's Greenwhich Village during the early and mid 1900's. During his years as a bohemian in New York he met many people, some famous (such as ee cummings and Ezra Pound) and many more equally interesting yet unknown people. Through his many friends and detractors he drew the attention of a young reporter, Joseph Mitchell, who interviewed him for a piece in the New Yorker. The book contains the two pieces that Joseph Mitchell wrote for the New Yorker about Joe Gould and his unpublished work, rumored to be ten times larger than the bible (over 10 million words), The Oral History. The more I read the more I craved to know more about Joe Gould and his life. I highly recommend this book as it is a true snapshot into the life of someone who deserves to be known. Joseph Mitchell truly captured the feel of New York and inner workings of Joe Gould and his crazy life. Apparently, 11 dime-store composition books that make up a nearly 150,000-word diary (part of his Oral History)are quietly tucked away within NYU's archives in NYC - I can't wait to get a look at them as well! Live on Joe Gould!
Rating:
Summary: I fell in love with Joe Gould
Review: It is rare to find a book such as Joe Gould's Secret and even rarer still that through reading it, one would fall in love with such a irritating, grubby, vile little man as Gould. But love it was - certainly not at first sight but as I began to learn his history and then finally his secret, my heart just gave way. Joe Gould was a well known "vagrant" in New York's Greenwhich Village during the early and mid 1900's. During his years as a bohemian in New York he met many people, some famous (such as ee cummings and Ezra Pound) and many more equally interesting yet unknown people. Through his many friends and detractors he drew the attention of a young reporter, Joseph Mitchell, who interviewed him for a piece in the New Yorker. The book contains the two pieces that Joseph Mitchell wrote for the New Yorker about Joe Gould and his unpublished work, rumored to be ten times larger than the bible (over 10 million words), The Oral History. The more I read the more I craved to know more about Joe Gould and his life. I highly recommend this book as it is a true snapshot into the life of someone who deserves to be known. Joseph Mitchell truly captured the feel of New York and inner workings of Joe Gould and his crazy life. Apparently, 11 dime-store composition books that make up a nearly 150,000-word diary (part of his Oral History)are quietly tucked away within NYU's archives in NYC - I can't wait to get a look at them as well! Live on Joe Gould!
Rating:
Summary: THE STORY OF TWO JOES
Review: Joseph Gould was a member of one of the oldest families in New England. A graduate of Harvard the world was at the feet of this New England scion. Joseph Mitchell was a good old boy from North Carolina. Anxious to work as a reporter he came to New York where he cut his journalistic teeth. His particular subjects of interest were the down and out denizens living on the edge in New York city. So what has one Joe got to do with the other? Plenty. Joe Gould was the subject of a profile for the New Yorker (1942) as written by Mitchell. Mitchell's encounter with Gould is an intiguing story that carried him through the bizare behavior of a man who had a secret. More than that Gould grows on Mitchell like a fungus that he rewrote another story about Gould twenty-two years later. The reflections, insights and comedy of both profiles and the character that inhabits them will build within you a disgust for Joe Gould or deep pity for a man who threw away his life. Who was Joe Gould? What was his secret? What part did Mitchell play in his life? All of those questions race through your mind as you read this story. Mitchell encounters a stinking, alcoholic, and dirty bum. Ah but this bum is more than he appears. He is a master in using people and sees himself as a bohemian. Young Joe Mitchell is naive at first in dealing with this older man but as the two get involved we see a relationship being built. Mitchell cares about his subject regardless of the lies and grandiose ideas that Gould shares with him. Mitchell has the gift of seeing through his subject without taking away the subject's dignity. Gould's profile could easily become a study about mental illness, homelessness, bohemians and skid row during the depression and afterwards. If you look at the story more carefully you find the subject says more about Mitchell than it does about Gould. Mitchell uses Gould as a feature for an article. He serves as Gould's co-dependent in providing him with money for alcohol. He refuses to confront Joe about his secret and after awhile he begins to dislike the man. The two Joes are an intriguing duo of two men trying to find and define themselves in a harsh world. Joe Gould indulges in fantasy. Mitchell keeps punching away at life and becomes in one sense what Gould could have been. After twenty-two years, Mitchell couldn't extricate himself from the memory of a man who impacted his life. Joe Mitchell has shared with us what it means to be compassionate to a man who was a rascal of the worst kind.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent work of non-fiction
Review: Joseph Mitchell has written a piece of journalism that is true, but seems almost like a fictitious story. I won't ruin anything. It's about a man (Joe Gould) who chose the life of a Bohemian ( a bum) and J. Mitchell's quest for something that Gould had been working on for many years. There are so many different emotions in this story. It's very funny yet it is very sad at times. Above all, it is a true story. It seems more powerful because it is true. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys or studies journalistic techniques. It teaches you many things. Mitchell is one of the best reporters of this century.
Rating: 
Summary: No Hope For Joe Gould
Review: Joseph Mitchell takes two looks at the life of Joe Gould, a homeless denizen of NYC's Greenwich Village. From a well-known Massachussetts family and a Harvard grad, Gould lives from day to day on handouts to support his great work; An Oral History of Our Time, a mammoth undertaking which is said by Gould to be the longest book in the world. His story and its eventual sad end is reported by Mitchell with compassion and intelligence. Mitchell tells a solid tale but Gould is such an unlikeable character I felt distanced from him and never truly warmed to the book despite the author's obvious skill. I definitely will try some of his other work where the subject matter is not so limited.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Book from a Master of American Nonfiction
Review: Joseph Mitchell was a legendary, and legendarily eccentric, writer for The New Yorker. Disparate things fascinated him: the Fulton Fish Market, gypsies, bums in the Bowery, New York's architecture, the men who worked the Hudson River. Mitchell would immerse himself in the lives of the people who held his attention, and during the 1940s and 1950s he turned out a series of New Yorker stories that are unique in American literary nonfiction. "Joe Gould's Secret," the book, is an anthology of two New Yorker pieces. The first, "Professor Seagull," ran in the magazine in 1942. The second, "Joe Gould's Secret" (the article) ran in two parts in 1964. The first was an affectionate profile of a Harvard-educated down-and-outer named, of course, Joe Gould, who was a well-known and much-tolerated bum in Greenwich Village. The second piece expanded on the first, again portraying Mr. Gould, but also detailing the strange story of Mr. Gould's "Oral History of Our Times." Joe Mitchell turns his acute eye for detail (and his remarkable patience) on Joe Gould, and writes with grace and humor. Mr. Mitchell had an acute ear, as well, and let's Mr. Gould speak for himself for page after page. The pieces in this book are exquisitely crafted, and all the more poignant for Joe Mitchell's secret: Not long after publishing the last word on Joe Gould, Mr. Mitchell ceased publishing. He came to The New Yorker every day, and claimed to be working on a long piece year after year, but never ushered a word of it into print. To my knowledge, no one knows (or at least no one has said) what the piece was to be, and why Mr. Mitchell could not seem to finish it. An extraordinary book by an extraordinary writer.
Rating:
Summary: Little Man Lost In Life.
Review: Reading anything by Joseph Mitchell is a goldmine of pleasure and "Joe Gould's Secret" is no different: a fascinating profile of a well-known Greenwich Village eccentric. Joe Gould was, for upwards of thirty-five years, a homeless dropout living from day to day on his wits and handouts from any sympathetic ear, whether friends or strangers. The two parts of the book, headed Professor Seagull, and Joe Gould's Secret, first appeared in the New Yorker in 1942 and 1964.The son of a medical practitioner, Harvard-educated Gould arrived in New York in 1916 and soon dismissed all thought of holding down a steady job when he had a flash of inspiration to write what he called "An Oral History of Our Times". He decided any form of regular employment would be detrimental to his thinking. Over many years, Gould would add daily to this work "in progress" ("about a dozen times as long as the bible") even when badly hung over; loading his fountain pen in the Village post office, scribbling in grubby, dog-eared school exercise books in parks, doorways, cafeterias, Bowery flophouses, subway trains and in public libraries, some of these hangouts also serving as places to doss - alternatives to the floor of an artist friend's studio or a subway station. 270 filled notebooks had been stored in numerous drops for safekeeping until the work was completed. Mitchell, intrigued by the "Oral History" idea, wrote a compassionate profile of Gould showing much patience and sensitivity in his dealings with his subject with whom he spent an inordinate amount of time. When a publisher friend of Mitchell asked to see Gould's material, with a view to publishing a book of selections, an indignant Gould declared that the material would either be published in its entirety or "not at all". Scruffy in appearance, wearing cast-offs, often unwashed for days at a time, all the time dogged by "homelessness, hunger and hangovers", ("I'm the foremost authority in the U.S.A. on the subject of doing without") Gould's norm was to hang around bars and diners in the Village cadging food, money and drinks from friends, visiting tourists and other regular contributors to the "Joe Gould Fund". He survived on a diet of fresh-air, dog-ends, strong black coffee, fried egg sandwiches and bottles of diner-bar ketchup supped off a plate. ("the only grub I know that's free of charge") Once asked what made him as he is today, Gould answered it was all down to a strong distaste for material possessions, Harvard, and years on end of bad living on cheap booze and grub "beating the living hell out of my insides". Things took a turn for the better for Gould when a secret benefactor, informed of Gould's plight and worsening health, paid for his room and board at a cheap hotel for upwards of three years. When the subsidy was suddenly cut-off without explanation, however, Gould reverted to the flophouses in the Bowery that were handy for the Village. Thereafter, Gould spiralled rapidly downwards. He died in 1957 whereupon Mitchell, who knew as much as anyone about the "Oral History", was persuaded to join a Committee set up to organise the collection of the mass of scattered material that made up "An Oral History of Our Times". If you enjoy "Joe Gould's Secret", read also "McSorley's Wonderful Saloon", a marvellous collection of profiles of old-time New York characters in a New York that is no longer.
Rating:
Summary: The Two Faces of Joe
Review: The first sketch that Joseph Mitchell made of Joe Gould, "Professor Seagull," primarily a simple exposition of a bohemian character that the New Yorker and its readers found to be an entertaining piece about an eccentric who claims to be writing an oral history, a book containing so many pages that it would dwarf the author if neatly stacked up. A work that would place the title of grand historian on Joe Gould, this so called Oral History was said to contain not just the usual dates and names of what people think of as history, but the over-heard conversations of the common man as well as scribbles lifted from park benches and washroom walls that Gould deemed to be more telling of history than the formal history taught in primary and secondary institutions. Mitchell infused this first work with witticisms and anecdotes that placed Gould in a more positive light than what is revealed about the man in the second story. There are many parallels in both stories; the opening paragraphs in both stories almost mirror each other but for a few telling and well-placed words, but for the most part, the second story gives the true definition of the character Joe Gould. The second story, "Joe Gould's Secret" gives the reader a different view of the same man. This version lifts the mask from the faces of the author and subject, exposing the truth that is not entirely based on fact. Here, Gould is shown to the reader with all faults and disagreeable characteristics intact. The feisty little homeless bohemian has turned into a scavenging, begging, egregious bum dead set on getting the attention or money he craves, and acts like a child when he does not get what he wants. Joe Gould doesn't actually crave money as much as what a couple of dollars can get him in the way of alcohol, coffee and the notebooks he scribbles in incessantly. The scribbles are later shown to contain not one bit of dialogue overheard by Gould, but the same four or five essays he has been working on for many years. The fact that Gould has been re-writing, tearing up and re-writing the same stories for several decades is the reason for the second installment of the character sketch given to us by Mitchell.
For twenty years, Mitchell has lived with the lie imbedded in his first sketch of Joe Gould, "Professor Seagull." The lie is intricate in nature and has many facets that kept it a secret for twenty years. With the injection of Mitchell himself into the second story, "Joe Gould's Secret," a light is thrown on the subject of the interplay between Joe Gould and Joseph Mitchell. There is a reason why Mitchell has placed himself in the story instead of writing from an onlooker's prospective as most profiles were written at the time and are written still. With this injection of author placed into the context of the story, Mitchell is giving the reader a glimpse of how the author can be seen in the same vein as the subject of the story. The two are entwined in a circle of deceit that encompasses the meaning of the word 'lie' in the direct or ordinary definition of the word.
After stumbling upon the mendacity that Gould wove with his stories of the Oral History, Mitchell feels as if he has been duped by Gould, that everything that Gould stands for is an enormous and cruel lie that Gould constructed in order to gain whatever it is that he needed for self-acknowledgement and worth. After ruminating for a while, Mitchell begins to feel some sympathy for Gould by remembering an endeavor of his own. Mitchell had a dream to write a novel that would be about a man and his conquests and revelations in New York City. The novel was to have some of the same elements as Gould's Oral History in the form of spoken dialogue from an old Negro street preacher. This novel was everything to Mitchell that the Oral History was to Gould, that is, as Gould is quoted as saying, "My rope and my scaffold, my wife and my floozy," etc. Although Mitchell was obsessed with writing the epic he constructed full-form in his mind, he was never able to actually write one word of it. This remembrance cools Mitchell's anger and he allows Gould to proceed with his deception without intervention. It takes a while for Mitchell to win his trust, but once it has been done, Gould once again dons the mask of the historian of his times and carries on as usual. Mitchell feels it unnecessary to expose Gould after this revelation of like characteristics between himself and Gould, and publishes the first profile, "Professor Seagull."
While Mitchell was able to place his dream novel on the backburner and continue life as a journalist, Gould continued to live the fantasy of the man who would someday be known as a great historian based on the jumbled dross floating around in his head. Gould had no other life and despised monetary gain and believed that he could never accomplish his goal of writing his history book if tied down to a regular job. Gould was hopeless in his yearnings and dreams. The one thing that he wanted and needed was the one thing that kept him from succeeding, whereas Mitchell rose above his desire to create a grand opus and settled for what he knew he could accomplish. The answer to the question that would tie this story neatly together is the one thing that Mitchell does not completely decipher after he has accused Gould of deception and trickery. The one line, if heard correctly, would answer many questions concerning the Oral History as well as Mitchell's dream novel, and that is when Gould indistinctly says, "It's not a question of laziness." If heard correctly, then what has kept Gould and Mitchell from realizing their dreams comes down to self-doubt and insecurities, and not from a lack of skill. These unrealized works of grand design are not with us today in written form only because the creators did not find themselves worthy of the tremendous work of placing into print what was fully realized in their heads.
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