Joe Gould’s Secret was quite an interesting read. In the introduction, William Maxwell spills the beans about the two views the book is written in. Nonetheless, his foreword does not provide any justice to the excellence in which Joe Gould was presented: first as “an odd and penniless and unemployable little man” and second as a misunderstood soul on a mission.
The shift from impersonal to personal in both parts of the book serves as a major mechanism in transforming Gould’s character. In “Professor Sea Gull”, I imagined him to be the neighborhood’s grouch who got fired up if you got too close to his lawn- minus the land and house of course. The latter portion of the book you see Joseph Mitchell take on a more in-depth analysis of Gould, going into greater detail about what made the man tick. Suddenly Gould no longer seems like a misfortunate, weird soul; he’s simply a man who chose his own path dictated by the events of his life. Mitchell humanizes Gould by providing descriptions of everything that had to do with him from his background to his habits and even the clothes he wore. At one point when it was mentioned he was wearing a dirty seersucker suit, I got a perfect visual and cringed at the image; I’ve owned a pair of seersucker pants before and visioning the beautiful summer fabric anything less than spotless is heartbreaking.