Joe Gould's Secret

Joe Gould's Secret is Joseph Mitchell's affectionate portrait of the great bohemian Joe Gould: "an odd and penniless and unemployable little man who came to the city in 1916 and ducked and dodged and held on as hard as he could for over thirty-five years."

Gould lived for forty years on the streets of New York compiling material for his "Oral History of Our Time." Joseph Mitchell wrote two profiles of Gould for The New Yorker, the first published in 1942 and the second in 1964, after Gould's death. It adds up to a wonderful, tender, funny account of a remarkable man and the unearthing of his secret.

This edition includes an introduction by William Maxwell, a colleague of Joseph Mitchell's at The New Yorker.