Joe Gould has always
fascinated me, probably because he rejected so many things that I
myself reject, and because he lived his own insights so
full-heartedly.
Jill Lapore's new
book, “Joe Gould's Teeth, takes him seriously, as I think
he should be taken. She believes that Gould's “Oral History”
really did exist despite what's said in Joseph Mitchell's book, “Joe
Gould's Secret,” and it's film adaptation in 2000.
My first
acquaintance and fascination with Joe Gould was through e. e.
cummings' references in some of his poems to him.
There is a line that
Gould wrote which has been in my mind for over fifty years and which
was especially important to me in the years just after I first read
it. He wrote this line following some remarks about losing illusions
and having to follow his own essential purposes calmly:
“...I suppose I feel about it this way because I have delusions of
grandeur – I believe myself to be Joe Gould.”
Lepore writes the
following about Joe's confinement to the Central Islip Psychiatric
Center on Long Island:
It was likely at Central Islip, in 1929, that Joe Gould lost his
teeth. “The first thing they did with all patients was to take out
all their teeth,” wrote Muriel Gardiner, recalling her residency
at a mental hospital in New Jersey at the time. This was on the
theory, she explained, “that mental illness of any sort was always
the result of a physical infection.” It didn't help. - p.83
There was
more to this removal of teeth by psychiatrists than Lapore suggests
by this short quote from Muriel Gardiner. Teeth have a large
symbolism in dreams and mythology and the psychopathology of everyday
life. I imagine it played into the old custom of having all one's
teeth removed on reaching eighteen years of age.
Just the widespread
dream of one's teeth falling out is a clue to the far-reaching and
deep symbolism of teeth. I've read many different interpretations of
that particular symbolism in dreams, of one's teeth falling out, and
the interpretation that rings best for me is based on the view that
teeth represent ideas. They are what enable us to get hold of
something, to bite into something, to analyze something. I think that
the tooth which a shaman sucks out from indigenous people's
bloodstream is basically ridding the sufferers of a bad idea. A dream
of one's teeth falling out could thus mean having one's ideas
destroyed.
They pulled out all his teeth.
 |
| Joe Gould |
Here is a poem
cummings wrote about him:
little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn't know where to find them(and found a secondhand set which click)little gould used to amputate his appetite with bad brittle candy but just(nude eel)now little joe lives on air Harvard Brevis Est for Handkerchief read Papernapkin no laundry bulls likes People preferring Negroes Indians Youse n.b. ye twang of little joe(yankee)gould irketh sundry who are trying to find their minds(but never had any to lose) and a myth is as good as a smile but little joe gould's quote oral history unquote might(publishers note)be entitled a wraith's progress or mainly awash while chiefly submerged or an amoral morality sort-of-aliveing by innumerable kind-of-deaths (Amérique Je T'Aime and it may be fun to be fooled but it's more fun to be more to be fun to be little joe gould)
