Joe Gould's Secret Book

Of Bohemianism and Creativity: Life as Narration

By the time I finished reading this haunting and poignant book, I was wondering whether there is a connection between self-exile (a term I use very loosely) and man's unending desire to narrate. Creation is a solitary act. When I was still living in my hometown, I loved escaping to my bedroom after dinner, making myself detached from my people, who used to sit in the drawing room watching soap operas. I used to read stuff here and there, mostly mystery novels, paranormal science and the like, and loved to imagine stories - though I hardly wrote any. It was an early fascination with things mysterious. During those days, I longed to be alone on some mountain, in a cozy hut with a warm hearth in it. I never had the faintest idea what I was going to do in that hut. But thinking about that hut made my adrenaline rush. Even today, when I look back and think about my teenage years, the image of that hut suddenly pops up, as if I had actually lived there. I outgrew that phase as I started searching for a job. It was stupid really, but such fascination is unavoidable while one is growing up. Only few of us really end up being bohemians.

Joseph Mitchell's beautifully rendered, symphony-like biography of an eccentric bohemian named Joe Gould is a work of classic storytelling. Gould was a tramp who lived on the streets of Greenwich Village, and survived on food and cloths donated by people who cared for him, or those who helped him out of pity. Though very unkempt, and irritating at times, he was a genuinely interesting character. Mitchell creates a very vibrant sketch of Gould's complex personality that remains with you for days after the reading is over. What interested me most was Gould's life ambition - Oral History of the world, the book he had spent his entire life writing, and which, according to him, would be an accurate history of the world. The piles of papers already written for "Oral history" exceeded Gould's own height. At one of Mitchell's meetings with him, Gould even condemned his untidy, vagabond life, but immediately consoled himself that this was the only way to live if he had to write the "Oral history". How else could he capture people talking? Because "people talking is history". Funny thing is that most of the people in Greenwich Village knew about the herculean task he had subjected himself to, and often inquired about its progress.

Because he didn't have a home, kind and concerned people in the neighborhood sheltered his many piles of pages, so in a way his book in the making was scattered under various roofs. After he died they couldn't find the "Oral History" in those pages. Maybe that is why Mitchell's biographical portrait of Gould has the word "secret" in it, but the secret here is not something that a reader awaits like in the mystery novels. It is about human weakness, and the little, insignificant things one does to keep going. I assure you readers that it is hardly a spoiler, as the pleasure of the book totally lies in the way Mitchell takes you through this unusual life.

Gould used to write big time. While to those around him he appeared to be taking constant notes, a notion he always emphasized, he was, in fact, re-writing the same few chapters dealing with seemingly trivial events in his own early life. He suffered from a psychological condition called hypergraphia: an obsessive urge to write. It is not incorrect to state that he spent his life writing junk, and that the "Oral history" everyone eagerly waited for never existed. Gould left many threads unanswered. Mitchell narrates to us the life of this clochard, an apparent intellectual trying to capture the unconscious of the "shirt-sleeved multitude", with such meticulous observation that the narration in turn becomes Mitchell's own art - as if Gould, through living an immaterial life waited for someone who will finally capture him in words, and make him immortal, at least in the papyrus memory.

I was fascinated by two insignificant essays Gould tirelessly wrote all his life: one was based on his father's death (which must have meant a great deal to him), and other was on ketchup or something related to tomatoes. Just imagine: a person assumes detachment from society, and lives like a tramp to write about certain events of his youth over and over again - interesting but sad.

But I think I have sensed something in Gould's biography, to which Mitchell points in passing, which may contain a key to understand him: his block. Gould had envisioned a theme, which if written with great dedication could have been a unique, if not greatest, book on human history. But he must have felt that the theme was bigger than him - a feeling that he was trying to lift himself by lifting his own shoelace. I have gone through this feeling myself. Writing in itself is a curious, at times arduous, affair. I sometimes get amused how I started writing after leaving home. Though I loved creating plots, and used to imagine scenes of my stories during long bike rides with friends, I never wrote a word when I was at home. Away from home, solitude made me write. So in a way, what I loosely refer to as self-exile here, and what Gould imposed upon himself, seems like a necessary condition. After writing short-stories here and there, when I finally conceived a grand plot, I was suddenly made aware of my current limitations. The plot looked so terrifyingly big that I would just put it aside and write trivial things instead - things not even worth writing. At one point I even tried writing a book on the impossibility of writing a book. So I think I intuitively understand Gould when he writes about tomato ketchup, trapped in a strange loop.

Gould had created an illusion, a mask, about the "Oral history" being written, while in reality it was not. He used to hide behind this mask, and enjoyed the possible glory his work was to bring, or to some extent the rumor of which already brought. It was his incapability to write what he had envisioned that in itself became a story worth telling. He narrated his tale through living, and not writing. He should thank his stars that there was a Mitchell to capture it. His passion laid, not in recounting the "Oral history", but in recounting his life, his incapability.