The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Tuesday, September 6, 2016 — 11A

BOOK REVIEW
Daily Book Review: 
‘Joe Gould’s Teeth’

By RENNIE PASQUINELLI

For The Daily

It’s not too late to pick up 

a short summer read. And if 
you’re a fan of profiles on eccen-
tric historical 
figures, this is 
certainly 
the 

book for you.

Joe 
Gould 

was a nobody 
with 
connec-

tions. 
His 

family 
name 

carried him further than any 
college degree could. Friends 
with Ezra Pound, E.E. Cum-
mings and other contemporary 
writers and artists of his time, 
Gould was known for his odd-
ball mystique around the liter-
ary community — especially 
around Harlem.

From the beginning of World 

War I to the end of World War 
II, Gould (supposedly) worked 
vigorously on “The Oral History 
of Our Time”: a history of the 
world told through regular 
people’s stories. His friends and 
his work led to a spotlight in 
The New Yorker, an infamous 
profile entitled “Professor Sea 
Gull” by Joseph Mitchell. “The 

Oral History,” however, was 
never published, even after 
Gould’s death in 1957. Many 
have tried to find “The Oral 
History,” but many have failed.

Jill 
Lepore, 
a 
Harvard 

historian and author of “The 
Secret 
History 
of 
Wonder 

Woman,” crafts a short and 
sweet profile on Gould that is 
not only a search for “The Oral 
History,” but also a revealing 
profile on a complete asshole.

“Joe Gould is not a lovable old 

man,” reported The Harvard 
Crimson in an interview with 
Gould. This description of Gould 
is truly an understatement. The 
most difficult part of getting 
through “Joe Gould’s Teeth” 
is 
the 
protagonist’s 
(and, 

simultaneously, 
antagonist’s) 

racism, sexism and relentless 
harassment towards a black 
woman. Gould was a proponent 
of eugenics, believed that the 
black population tainted the 
white population and often 
approached women to ask them 
if they were “gropable.” In a 
“Breaking Bad” fashion, the 
hero of the story became the 
villain. Instead of a progression 
that 
happens 
within 
many 

seasons, 
however, 
Gould 

becomes the villain within a 
matter of pages.

The saving grace of Gould’s 

profile is the discovery and 
inclusion of Augusta Savage, the 
woman he incessantly stalked, 
even when she requested him 
to stop countless amounts of 
times. Lepore’s astute research 
into Savage’s life could have 
been 
another 
book 
itself. 

Savage, an African American 
single mother and well-known 
sculptor, brings to light a 
different kind of celebrity; one 
vastly different from Gould. 
The 
dichotomy 
between 

the two brings diversity in 
character and a break from the 
general unpleasantness that is 
Joe Gould.

“Joe Gould’s Teeth,” though 

short, is difficult to get through. 
Each page is filled with pull-
out-your-hair-worthy 
details 

surrounding 
Gould’s 
blatant 

disrespect for women and black 
people. Lepore is a fantastic 
historian; her intimate details 
make it possible to form a deep 
hatred for the book’s subject. 
This doesn’t necessarily make 
for a bad read, but fair warning: 
your eyes may get stuck in the 
rolled-back position.

Joe Gould’s 
Teeth

Jill Lepore

Knopf

F

emale friendship is 
beautiful and entirely 
terrifying. There are 

expectations for friendships to 
be some of the most important 
relationships 
in a woman’s 
life — that 
is, until 
husbands 
and children 
typically take 
over these 
roles. Novels 
and films 
detailing 
the plight of 
the modern 
woman often 
list the dissolution of female 
friendships after marriage 
as concerning, but not overly 
important. Only rarely do cir-
cumstances allow for friends to 
continue to play as influential 
a role as they may have in girl-
hood.

This intense lifelong connec-

tion between two women is the 
center of the Neapolitan nov-
els, the acclaimed work of the 
pseudonymous Italian novelist 
Elena Ferrante. In the four-
part bildungsroman, Ferrante 
details the evolution of a female 
friendship between Elena and 
Lila. Told from the first-person 
perspective of Elena, the story 
reads like the diary of a vicious 
and vulnerable teenage girl. 
After they grow into adulthood 
as best friends, Lila disappears 
without a trace and without 
letting Elena know where 
she’s going. Elena vengefully 
writes their story, juxtaposing 
the intense volatility of Lila’s 
actions with her own normalcy. 
Even when Lila is not physically 
near her, Elena is inextricably 
bound to her best friend, each 
one struggling to define herself 
outside the terms of the other.

The novel is electric, because 

in between the strange instanc-

es specific to a low-income 
neighborhood in Naples exists 
the elements of life that makes 
your heart race — sex, jealousy, 
violence, fireworks. Reading 
Ferrante feels eerily similar to 
the moment when someone asks 
if you can keep a secret. The 
urgency of her words creates a 
bond between reader and author 
that is exceptional and infre-
quent. Ferrante’s description of 
the female experience creates 
an intimacy with the author 
so vivid that the reader feels 
like they know her, or that she 
knows them.

“My Brilliant Friend” pres-

ents as almost confessional, 
with Elena painting an incred-
ibly vivid picture of the life 
of her best friend as an act of 
revenge. But Elena is so deeply 
entrenched in the story of their 
upbringing that Ferrante dif-
ferentiates her work from the 
simplicity of gossip. She puts 
aside the pettiness of the social 
currency that gossip and infor-
mation provide, eschewing the 
values of works like Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan’s 1777 play 
“School for Scandal.” In the play, 
the characters revel in the ten-
sions caused by knowledge and 
scandalous divulgences. But in 
the Neapolitan novels, Ferrante 
concentrates on the substance of 
her characters, watching them 
grow and change rather than 
simply forcing them into differ-
ent situations for reactions.

In a rare interview with 

The New Yorker, Ferrante said 
“writing is an act of pride.” She 
explains that she always wanted 
to hide her work, as writing 
felt presumptuous and shame-
ful. The reader can clearly see 
this reluctance for ostentation 
in Ferrante’s novels — not only 
because she literally hides her 
identity, but because the exi-
gency of her words forces her 
stories out into the open.

Stories like the Neapolitan 

novels, with unafraid first-
person narration and a storyline 
focused on transforming the 
mundane into the extraordi-
nary, are inextricably linked to 
women’s writing. Novels like 
Ferrante’s feel like they conform 
to a strictly gendered style of 
writing. It’s fluid and fast-paced, 
with subtle undertones of con-
flicting emotions. The distinctly 
feminine writing of these books 
lies in their imperative languid-
ness — these stories desperately 
need to be told, but also want to 
be coaxed with encouragement. 
They are complex, unapologeti-
cally requiring the full attention 
of their audience.

There’s been some discus-

sion recently of whether or not 
we should be reading to make 
friends with characters, and the 
role that likability should play 
in literature. Although wielding 
expectations of friendship for 
fictional characters is a flawed 
approach, it is true that we read 
for many of the same reasons as 
the ones for which we pursue 
friendship. We read to connect, 
to recognize the other minds 
that are constantly reverberat-
ing around us. Ferrante’s novels 
especially reject solipsism as 
we look into the lives of others 
who exist with thoughts and 
feelings strikingly similar to 
our own. She takes the friend-
ship between women seriously, 
which is unusual in a place like 
Naples where societal norms 
dictate the prioritization of 
other relationships. Ferrante 
gives space to the complex feel-
ings of these overlooked and 
sometimes neglected relation-
ships, returning meaning and 
power to the bearers of female 
friendship.

Neapolitan novels or Nea-

politan ice cream? To settle the 

debate, e-mail rebler@umich.edu

LITERATURE COLUMN

Ferrante’s feminism

REBECCA 
LERNER

Arts

WERE YOU PAINTING MURALS 

INSTEAD OF PAINTING THE TOWN 

RED DURING WELCOME WEEK?

THEN JOIN ARTS.

E-mail ajtheis@umich.edu and katjacqu@umich.edu for 

information on applying to Daily Arts.

