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A review by guaninecytosine
Joe Gould's Secret by Joseph Mitchell
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
Read for book club; one selection from the Up in the Old Hotel anthology.
On a less charitable reading, I sometimes feel like male literati in the early-mid 20th century were self-obsessed enough to end up being profoundly gullible. A neighborhood character / grifter claims to have written a 8,000,000 word Oral History of Our Time with little / no evidence? Well, he’s a self-evangelizing Harvard guy, so it’s gotta be true. Might as well perpetuate that mythos.
On a more charitable reading, a healthy reminder that every human has their own interiority that is inherently singular and therefore has merit. And that it’s hard to tell in the present which stories will be emblematic of the past in the future, so maintaining a general open-mindedness to all human interest will weave a more robust narrative tapestry than being preemptively selective.
Seesawing between eye-rolling and wondering if I’m being too judgmental. But regardless, appreciate the immersion into a vivid portrait of 1940s NYC. I see why Joseph Mitchell is one of the New Yorker’s greatest (even though it’s nuts they kept him employed for 32 years after his final publication).
On a more charitable reading, a healthy reminder that every human has their own interiority that is inherently singular and therefore has merit. And that it’s hard to tell in the present which stories will be emblematic of the past in the future, so maintaining a general open-mindedness to all human interest will weave a more robust narrative tapestry than being preemptively selective.
Seesawing between eye-rolling and wondering if I’m being too judgmental. But regardless, appreciate the immersion into a vivid portrait of 1940s NYC. I see why Joseph Mitchell is one of the New Yorker’s greatest (even though it’s nuts they kept him employed for 32 years after his final publication).