Free Joe Gould's Secret by Joseph; Mitchell Page B

the twenties and thirties, a few bits and pieces and fragments of the Oral History were published in little magazines,” he said, “and I have copies of them somewhere in here.” He took a small, rolled-up paper bag with a rubber band around it from the deepest part of the portfolio and looked at it inquisitively. “What in hell is this?” he said, opening the bag and peering into it. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Cigarette butts.” He carefully put the bag back in the portfolio. “Sometimes, in wet weather or snow all over the streets,” he said, “it’s good to have some butts stuck away.” Then he brought out four magazines one by one and stacked them on the table. They were dog-eared and grease-spotted and coffee-stained.
    â€œHere’s Ezra Pound’s old magazine the Exile,” he said, riffling the pages of the one on top. “The Exile lasted exactly four issues, and this is the second issue—Autumn, 1927—and there’s a chapter from the Oral History in it. I have E. E. Cummings to thank for that. Cummings is one of my oldest friends in New York. He and I come from pretty much the same kind of New England background, and our years at Harvard overlapped—my last year was his first year—but I got to know him in the Village. Sometime around 1923 or ’24 or ’25, Cummings spoke to Pound about me and the Oral History, and then Pound wrote to me, and we got into a correspondence that extended over several years. Pound became very enthusiastic about my plan for the History. He printed this little selection in the Exile , and later on, in his book ‘Polite Essays,’ after speaking of William Carlos Williams as a great, neglected American writer, he referred to me as ‘that still more unreceived and uncomprehended native hickory, Mr. Joseph Gould.’ And here’s Broom for August–November 1923. It has a chapter from the History—Chapter C-C-C-L-X-V-I-I-I. At that time I was numbering the chapters with Roman numbers. And here’s Pagany for April–June, 1931. It has some snippets from the History.
    â€œAnd here’s the greatest triumph of my life so far—the Dial for April, 1929. There are two essays from the Oral History in it. Marianne Moore, the poet, was editor of the Dial , and her office was right down here in the Village—on Thirteenth Street, just east of Seventh Avenue. It was one of those old houses—red brick, three stories high, a steep stoop leading up to the parlor floor, an ailanthus tree growing at a slant in front—that have always typified the Village to me. I used to drop in there about once a week and sit in her outer office all morning and sometimes all afternoon, too, reading back copies, and whenever I was able to wangle a little time with her I would try to get her to see the literary importance of the Oral History, and finally she printed these two little essays. Everything else I’ve ever done may disappear, but I’ll still be immortal, just because of them. The Dial was the greatest literary magazine ever published in this country. It published a great many masterpieces and near-masterpieces as well as a great many curiosities and monstrosities, and there’ll be bound volumes of it in active use in the principal libraries of the world as long as the English language is spoken and read. ‘The Waste Land’ came out in it. So did ‘The Hollow Men.’ Eliot reviewed ‘Ulysses’ for it. Two great stories by Thomas Mann came out in it—‘Death in Venice’ and ‘Disorder and Early Sorrow.’ Pound’s ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’ came out in it, and so did Hart Crane’s ‘To Brooklyn Bridge,’ and so did Sherwood Anderson’s ‘I’m a Fool.’ Joseph Conrad wrote for it, and so did Joyce and Yeats and Proust, and so did Cummings and Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf and Pirandello