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9781101947586 English 1101947586 From "New Yorker "staff writer and Harvard historian Jill Lepore, the dark, spellbinding tale of her restless search for the long-lost, longest book ever written, a century-old manuscript called The Oral History of Our Time. Joe Gould, a madman, believed he was the most brilliant historian of the twentieth century. So did some of his friends, a group of modernist writers and artists that included E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, and Ezra Pound. Gould began his life s work before the First World War, announcing that he intended to write down nearly everything anyone ever said to him. I am trying to preserve as much detail as I can about the normal life of every day people, he explained, because as a rule, history does not deal with such small fry. By 1942, when "The New Yorker" published a profile of Gould written by the reporter Joseph Mitchell, Gould s manuscript had grown to more than nine million words. But when Gould died in 1957, in a mental hospital, the manuscript was nowhere to be found. Then, in 1964, in Joe Gould s Secret, a second profile, Mitchell claimed that The Oral History of Our Time had been, all along, merely a figment of Gould s imagination. Lepore, unpersuaded, decided to find out. "Joe Gould s Teeth" is a Poe-like tale of detection, madness, and invention. Digging through archives all over the country, Lepore unearthed evidence that The Oral History of Our Time did in fact once exist. Relying on letters, scraps, and Gould s own diaries and notebooks including volumes of his lost manuscript Lepore argues that Joe Gould s real secret had to do with sex and the color line, with modernists relationship to the Harlem Renaissance, and, above all, with Gould s terrifying obsession with the African American sculptor Augusta Savage. In ways that even Gould himself could not have imagined, what Gould wrote down really is a history of our time: unsettling and ferocious.", From "New Yorker" staff writer and Harvard historian Jill Lepore, the story of the discovery of Joe Gould's long-lost manuscript, "The Oral History of Our Time," and of the violence, betrayals, and madness that led to its concealment. When Joseph Mitchell published his profile of Joseph Gould in the December 1942 issue of "The New Yorker, " he deemed Gould's purportedly masterful but rarely seen Oral History project, which allegedly consisted of nine million words detailing everything anyone ever said to him, "the longest unpublished work in existence." But Mitchell, in fact, hadn't read more than a few pages of the Oral History. The manuscript seemed to have gone missing, along with other of Gould's possessions--his hair, his sight, his teeth--as he began to sink deeper into poverty, drink, and destitution. And as Gould neared the end of his life, lying pathologically, begging for money from friends and strangers alike, and deflecting publishers' requests to read his work, Mitchell couldn't help but wonder: Had the Oral History ever existed? After Gould's death in 1957, Mitchell wrote a second profile in which he insisted that it did not. Was Mitchell wrong? "Joe Gould's Teeth" is a literary investigation of this enigmatic figure of the early twentieth century, who, despite doubts surrounding his sanity, captured the imaginations of the most prominent writers and artists of the time. Renowned master of historical storytelling Jill Lepore carefully unravels the riddle of Joe Gould and his missing manuscript, probing deeply into our collective self-conscious, the nature of art, and how we define our reality for the future. Complete with appearances from the likes of E. E. Cummings, Ezra Pound, and Augusta Savage and set against the backdrop of inter-war and post-war New York's glamour and grime, "Joe Gould's Teeth" is not only the portrait of one man's mind, but also a profound meditation on the limits of how well one ever knows another person."
9781101947586 English 1101947586 From "New Yorker "staff writer and Harvard historian Jill Lepore, the dark, spellbinding tale of her restless search for the long-lost, longest book ever written, a century-old manuscript called The Oral History of Our Time. Joe Gould, a madman, believed he was the most brilliant historian of the twentieth century. So did some of his friends, a group of modernist writers and artists that included E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, and Ezra Pound. Gould began his life s work before the First World War, announcing that he intended to write down nearly everything anyone ever said to him. I am trying to preserve as much detail as I can about the normal life of every day people, he explained, because as a rule, history does not deal with such small fry. By 1942, when "The New Yorker" published a profile of Gould written by the reporter Joseph Mitchell, Gould s manuscript had grown to more than nine million words. But when Gould died in 1957, in a mental hospital, the manuscript was nowhere to be found. Then, in 1964, in Joe Gould s Secret, a second profile, Mitchell claimed that The Oral History of Our Time had been, all along, merely a figment of Gould s imagination. Lepore, unpersuaded, decided to find out. "Joe Gould s Teeth" is a Poe-like tale of detection, madness, and invention. Digging through archives all over the country, Lepore unearthed evidence that The Oral History of Our Time did in fact once exist. Relying on letters, scraps, and Gould s own diaries and notebooks including volumes of his lost manuscript Lepore argues that Joe Gould s real secret had to do with sex and the color line, with modernists relationship to the Harlem Renaissance, and, above all, with Gould s terrifying obsession with the African American sculptor Augusta Savage. In ways that even Gould himself could not have imagined, what Gould wrote down really is a history of our time: unsettling and ferocious.", From "New Yorker" staff writer and Harvard historian Jill Lepore, the story of the discovery of Joe Gould's long-lost manuscript, "The Oral History of Our Time," and of the violence, betrayals, and madness that led to its concealment. When Joseph Mitchell published his profile of Joseph Gould in the December 1942 issue of "The New Yorker, " he deemed Gould's purportedly masterful but rarely seen Oral History project, which allegedly consisted of nine million words detailing everything anyone ever said to him, "the longest unpublished work in existence." But Mitchell, in fact, hadn't read more than a few pages of the Oral History. The manuscript seemed to have gone missing, along with other of Gould's possessions--his hair, his sight, his teeth--as he began to sink deeper into poverty, drink, and destitution. And as Gould neared the end of his life, lying pathologically, begging for money from friends and strangers alike, and deflecting publishers' requests to read his work, Mitchell couldn't help but wonder: Had the Oral History ever existed? After Gould's death in 1957, Mitchell wrote a second profile in which he insisted that it did not. Was Mitchell wrong? "Joe Gould's Teeth" is a literary investigation of this enigmatic figure of the early twentieth century, who, despite doubts surrounding his sanity, captured the imaginations of the most prominent writers and artists of the time. Renowned master of historical storytelling Jill Lepore carefully unravels the riddle of Joe Gould and his missing manuscript, probing deeply into our collective self-conscious, the nature of art, and how we define our reality for the future. Complete with appearances from the likes of E. E. Cummings, Ezra Pound, and Augusta Savage and set against the backdrop of inter-war and post-war New York's glamour and grime, "Joe Gould's Teeth" is not only the portrait of one man's mind, but also a profound meditation on the limits of how well one ever knows another person."