A Previously Unpublished Essay by the Legendary New York Mystery, Joe Gould: “Why I Write”
4 min readJan 4, 2020
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Below is a previously unpublished essay written in 1934 by one of the most legendary figures in American letters: Joe Gould. New Yorker writer Jill Lepore unearthed it while researching her 2016 book Joe Gould’s Teeth. It’s an incredible book. After I spotted the essay in Lepore’s bibliography, I got a copy from Columbia University’s…