Joe Gould (bohemian)

Joseph Ferdinand Gould (12 September 1889 – 18 August 1957) was an American eccentric, also known as Professor Seagull. Often homeless, he claimed to be the author of the longest book ever written, an Oral History of the Contemporary World (also known as Oral History of Our Time or Meo Tempore). He inspired the book Joe Gould's Secret (1965) and its film adaptation (2000), as well as being a character in the 2009 computer game The Blackwell Convergence.

Gould was born in a small suburb outside Boston in 1889. Jill Lepore speculates that he had hypergraphia. In his room at his parents’ house, in Norwood, Massachusetts, Gould had written all over the walls and all over the floor. He exhibited what are today understood as symptoms of autism and did poorly in school. He attended Harvard because his family wanted him to become a physician; both his grandfather, who taught at Harvard Medical School, and his father, also a doctor, had gone to Harvard. During his senior year, he had a breakdown and was kicked out.

Two months after his departure from Harvard, he embarked on a five-hundred-mile walking trip to Canada, exploring its landscape, and then came back to Boston. He applied for readmission to Harvard and was rejected. In 1915, he did field work for the Eugenics Record Office in Spring Harbor. He then went to North Dakota to study the Chippewa and Mandan cultures. He gained respect for their cultures and he also learned how to ride horses, dance, and sing. Gould wrote again to Harvard, asking to be allowed to make up his outstanding credits by taking the examination in a class taught by the anthropologist Earnest Hooton. Gould passed, got his degree, and in 1916 he moved to New York. At some point he entered Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane although Gould never acknowledged having been institutionalized.

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