Joe Gould '11, Poet, Dilettante, Bum, and Bohemian, Last of a Disappearing Species

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.

People at arty New York cocktail parties think the bearded man in the shabby clothes who is sometimes invited is a hum, but unlike the other residents of the Bowery, Gould is not a shambling, blank-expressioned alcoholic. He has a spark of vigor--some people call it exhibitionism--and a broad Harvard A that sets him apart from the rest.

Individualist

A strong individualist (to put it mildly), Gould, known among other things as the "last of the bohemians," has little respect for the conventions of society. His habits and routine are strictly his own, dictated solely by unpredictable impulse.

Taking time out from his massive life work, "An Oral History of Our Time," the Village Herodotus has written a monologue on "Why Princeton Should Be Abolished," which he hopes to have published in the near future, perhaps in the Saturday Review of Literature. Gould reasons along hitherto untried lines: "Princeton was originally the college of New Jersey, and in New Jersey people put tomatoes in their clam chowder." Therefore Princeton should be abolished.

Responsive to Alcohol

Extraordinarily responsive to alcohol, Gould once gave gin its free rein, but now he's on the wagon. He claims he'll stay away from hard liquor until his ninetieth birthday; "then I'm going to get drunk and stay that way, even if it kills me." But the way things look now, nicotine may get him before alcohol.

A writer of much threat and some promise, "Professor Sea Gull"--Village barkeeps also call him "The Mongoose"--subsists on doles from his more affluent friends in the literary world. Describing his present economic status, he remarks, "I have slept with Lady Poverty, but I'm conventional and don't consider that an introduction."

Though he doesn't look it, Joe has blue-blood ancestry. His branch of the Goulds has been in New England since 1635, and he is related to the Lowell, Lawrence, Storer, and Vroom families. Harvard was the appropriate college for him, and he graduated "magna cum difficultate" along with Conrad Aiken, Gluyas Williams, Howard Lindsay, and his "most distinguished classmate," Richard Whitney.

At one time after graduation, Gould earned his living by reviewing books. "Now," he says, "book reviewing is done by machines," and he considers himself a victim of technological unemployment. For many years he has devoted himself to the epic "Oral History," which he describes as a compendium, seemingly endless, of everything he has seen himself or been told first-hand in all parts of the world.

Unique Poetry

Included in the History are samples of his unique poetry. Much of his work is too obscene for publication, but an example of his more acceptable writing is his

"Love Song of an Isolationist" My love for you is of the very cleanest;

Holy and sweet is my emotion.

There should be something deep between us,

And I suggest the Atlantic Ocean.

Gould likes to be interviewed, says "I make good copy." Joseph Mitchell of the New Yorker treats Gould in "McSorley's Wonderful Saloon" where he spreads the fallacious (says Gould) story that Joe used to go into cafeterias and eat up a couples of bottles of ketchup, not because he liked it but because it was free.

Inventions Storms

And Mitchell better watch his stop. When insulted by some Bowery stroller, Gould snaps erect and lashes out with a storm of invective without over repeating himself, "Madam," he has said, "It is the duty of the bohemian to make a spectacle of himself. If may informality leads you to believe that I am a rum-dumb or that I belong in Bellevue, then hold fast to that belief; hold fast, and show your ignorance."