Inscribed to Another New Yorker Writer
Joe Gould's Secret
Publication: New York: Viking Press, 1965. First Edition.
Notes: A classic pair of New Yorker Profiles inscribed by the author to another New Yorker writer.
These two New Yorker magazine profiles, written 22 years apart, offer a biography of Joe Gould, a Greenwich Village bohemian who claimed to be writing a massive 9-million-word oral history of New York City. In fact, the manuscript did not exist, or probably didn't, or maybe it did but it was lost. The second Joe Gould essay was the last Mitchell wrote, although he continued to show up every day at the New Yorker until he died in 1996.
[10], 181, [1:blank] pages.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing, stating "First published in 1965..." with no additional printings noted). A very good copy in a very good dust jacket. Spine ends bumped; light shadow of a newspaper clipping on the endpapers (not present); jacket worn at the spine. This copy is inscribed to fellow New Yorker staff writer and later Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Sheehan. "For Susan Sheehan with love Joe Mitchell. September 29, 1965." The publication date of the book was September 16 (per a review slip seen in another copy; not included here). Susan had just married Neil Sheehan, who would also win a Pulitzer.
Provenance: The estate of Susan Sheehan to a Washington, DC, bookstore.
Item No: #366355
Price: $1,250