Joe Gould (bohemian)

Joe Gould ( born September 12, 1889 with Boston; † August 18, 1957 in New York City ) was an American writer and tramp.

Life

The son of a well-off family physicians studied at Harvard University, and completed his studies in 1911 with magna cum laude. In 1916 he moved to New York, where he lived primarily as a life artist and tramp. Besides, he wrote to the orally transmitted story, The Oral History of Our Time, whose contents he built from his everyday observations, which he captured, for example, in the conversation of passers-by.

He became known as the " Professor Seagull ", as well as the first title of the journalist Joseph Mitchell, who has portrayed him within twenty years twice. In 1942 an article in the newspaper The New Yorker about this strange tramp who helped Joe to a certain popularity. Professor Seagull because one often screaming and cawing found him and he claimed with seagulls to speak. After he collapsed on the street in 1952, he lived the last years in the Municipal Hospital on Long Iceland, where he worked with 68 years died on August 18, 1957, arteriosclerosis and senility.

His life story was also the inspiration for a film adaptation in 1999 with the title: Joe Gould 's secret.

"Madam, it is the duty of the bohemians, to make a spectacle " than on a chair in the introduction getätigter saying narrated by a party uninvited appearance.