The Poet in the Newsroom

The first newspaper building where I ever worked, the Long Island Press newspaper, was at what used to be the last stop of the El, in Jamaica, in the center of south Queens, in the hollow of the great city. Queens is flat and dull and then abruptly ends at wet sands of an ocean. Now the three-story Press building is empty, the bricks dead. Today, they would flock to it from every shelter and sidewalk grating because of a beggar's delight, an unattended door that went from the street right onto the staircase to the city room. Through this door, in a tweed overcoat so coated with grease that you could cook pancakes on it, came Joe Gould, the famous poet and bum from Greenwich Village. He didn't come for any research. He arrived to panhandle. A dollar would do, he said. After all, he had been on the subway all the way out here to the last stop. He deserved something, he said. Gottlieb, the editor, had to come up with two dollars. Then Gould tried the rest of the city room. Si Newhouse, the owner's son, sat by the window and ate Nedick's hot dogs for lunch and wrote police stories and hunched over like a man under guerrilla attack when Gould appeared. I told Gould, fuck you, old man. He talked about his roommate, Max Bodenheim. I didn't know who Bodenheim was, but I figured that he got half the take, being thate was Gould's roommate. So the two of them could go and fuck themselves.

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe