Review: Joe Gould's Teeth

Joe Gould's Teeth by Jill Lepore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An interesting read about people I came to care for less and less as the book went on. Joe Gould, no matter how quirky a character he may have been, seemed like a colossal asshole. If you're attached to Joseph Mitchell's profiles, steer clear.

An aside: Ezra Pound's letters were weird. Lepore quotes from his correspondence with e e cummings a number of times—here's him telling cummings to write "a nice lil piece" about Gould:

"mebbe that wd/ start somfink IF you
make it clear and EGGs plain WHY Joe
izza his
Torian"

I didn't know a thing about Pound. When I first saw this kind of phonetic spelling I thought it was neat, being so free and easy. But when I read on about what a racist/fascist he was, hiz funETIC style became more and more irritating. Alas, another celebrated colossal asshole. (Can't comment on the poetry, though.)

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