The state of Maine, long known for its salty Down East humor, has produced a disproportionate number of American humorists. One of the first was Seba Smith of Portland, whose groundbreaking work in political satire in the early nineteenth century was much imitated in his day. Charles Farrar Browne, who went by the pen name of Artemas Ward, pioneered the unsophisticated bumpkin who relies on misspelled, misused, and mispronounced words to manufacture a laugh (he was Abraham Lincoln’s favorite humorist). During the Gilded Age, Edgar Wilson “Bill” Nye moved past the cheap laughs garnered by Ward’s deployment of mangled language to a more sophisticated version of humor using understatement, anticlimax, and colorful expressions in well-crafted essays. E. B. White, who was from away but settled in Maine, took the high-quality humorous essay to new heights with his self-effacing, understated style of humor. Most recently, Tim Sample has carried the torch for Down East humor with a heavy reliance on accent in his stand-up comedy routines and his “Postcards from Maine” segment that appeared on CBS Sunday Morning from 1993 to 2004. Missing from this list of Maine notables is John Gould, whose career as a feature writer spanned over sixty years. He began his career at a small-town newspaper before rising to national prominence in the 1940s with his steady stream of feature pieces in major newspapers. Despite his national popularity, few outside of Maine know of John Gould and his uniquely Maine style of humor.Gould was born in 1908 in Brighton, Massachusetts, to Franklin and Hilda Gould. His father was a railway postal clerk on the Vanceboro & Boston Railway, and his mother was an immigrant from Prince Edward Island, Canada. When John was ten, Franklin moved his family to Freeport, Maine, to give his children the benefit of a rural upbringing in a small town. As a boy, Gould did chores on the farm, hunted in the woods, fished in the streams and ponds, and did odd jobs for the locals. His mother instilled in her son respect for the beauty and grammar of the English language, while his father and grandfather imparted the art of storytelling to him. As a youth, he spent countless hours in the public library reading the works of Mark Twain, Bill Nye, Bret Harte, and Guy de Maupassant, drawing inspiration for both humor and essay writing from these men. Gould loved both Twain and Nye, but he thought that Twain relied too much on accent. Nye, he believed, was a better humorist than Twain on account of his finely crafted prose style.1As a teenager, he worked as a reporter for a local newspaper, the Brunswick Record. This part-time work evolved into a full-time job after he graduated from Bowdoin College in 1931.2 For the next eight years, he worked there and wrote feature pieces for the Sunday New York Times, the Evening Sun, and the Boston Post. Told with a Mainer’s gentle and genial wit, Gould’s essays translated Maine language, stories, and people into nostalgic accounts of farm living, town meetings, and community spirit that won a wide readership in and beyond the boundaries of the state of Maine. His growing prospects as a feature writer and his ongoing squabbles with his editor over money and credit for his work led Gould to resign from his position at the Brunswick Record in 1939. Gould struggled to cobble a living from royalties and self-sufficient farming until 1942, when the Christian Science Monitor hired him to write a weekly column entitled “The Dispatch from the Farm.” From 1942 until the mid-1970s, Gould’s column was printed on the editorial page accompanied by illustrations by Francis Wenderoth Saunders and later by Gene Langley. His column was then moved from the editorial page to the “Home Forum,” where he continued to publish his work until the early 2000s.3While Gould churned out weekly pieces for the Christian Science Monitor, he also was contributing pieces to the Sunday New York Times, which published over thirty of his essays from the mid-forties to the end of the fifties. His stories of farm life, rural living, small-town affairs, and town meetings comforted his readers with a sense of nostalgia and helped them put the complexities of modern living into perspective. In addition to writing his weekly essays, Gould worked on publishing a book. His first proposal was for a book about his Boston wife’s “adjustment to country life.” Gould peddled his idea to the editor of the Sunday New York Times, Lester Markel, and Frances Phillips, an editor at William Morrow and Company. Impressed by the quality of Gould’s work, William Morrow published Gould’s series of amusing vignettes in a book entitled Farmer Takes a Wife (1942).4 The book sold well, was made into a Reader’s Digest serial, and was chosen as a Book of the Month Club selection.5 He followed it up with four titles on various aspects of Maine life: The House That Jacob Built (1947) humorously details the social functions of a farmhouse; And One to Grow On (1949) describes growing up in rural Maine; Neither Hay Nor Grass (1951) reflects broadly on Maine life; and Monstrous Depravity (1963) deals with the peculiarities of Maine cuisine. With few exceptions, these books were favorably reviewed in the Sunday New York Times by veteran journalists such as Charles Poore, Samuel T. Williamson, and Mary Ellen Chase.6 Chase’s praise mattered the most, for she was a native Mainer who could gauge the authenticity of Gould’s Maine humor and his reliability as a commentator on Maine life. Chase extolled Gould’s skillful use of Maine’s colloquial language to spin his yarns, a talent that enabled him to deliver an authentic encounter with the real Maine that exists outside of “Vacation Land.”7From 1943 to 1961, Gould was the principle reviewer of Maine and New England books for the New York Times. He chided writers “from away” who were pretentious enough to think they could write an authentic “Maine” book by simply adding the right “scenery, climate, good fishing and remoteness.”8 He lavished praise on the works of Maine’s principal female authors—Ruth Moore, Louise Rich, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Elizabeth Ogilvie—who depicted Maine life and people in a way that Mainers would recognize and find appealing. When it came to male authors, his measurement was not always exact. Gould’s admiration for Kenneth Roberts and Robert P. T. Coffin led him to fawn over some of their works despite their obvious flaws.9In 1958, Gould was hired as the editor of a local Maine newspaper, Lisbon Enterprise, where he offered conservative commentary on the politics and issues of the day until he stepped down in 1965. Gould continued to write for the Christian Science Monitor and began to publish regularly in Down East magazine, the premier magazine about Maine life and culture. For much of the 1970s, Gould was a featured author with a regular column titled “Room with a View.” Most of his essays focused on his usual topic of rural life, but he also penned a few tall tales and folktales, which became a passion of his in the late sixties and early seventies.By the 1980s, Gould was revered as the elder statesman of Maine humor. “He is rooted so deep in the ways and habits of mind of us State-of-Mainers,” notes David Woodbury, “that he can see what’s pitiful and funny and smart and stupid in our lives and tell about it so people everywhere laugh and understand their own troubles better than they did before. That is why he has come to be the, well, the Will Rogers of the Pine Tree State.”10 Gerald Lewis dedicated his book of Maine humor, How to Talk Yankee (1989), to Gould, referring to him as a “sage,” and Gould was often asked to write the introduction to books about Maine life, literature, and humor. His work was featured in anthologies of Maine literature, and one book or another of Gould’s always appeared on lists of must-read books about Maine.11 The most significant indicator of Gould’s standing among Maine humorists came in 1980 when Jim Brunelle, the author of the lone anthology of Maine humor, “Over to Home and from Away” (1981), looked to Gould for advice when compiling his work and honored the old man with the privilege of writing the introduction to his work (xii–xxiii).Categorizing Gould’s style within one camp of humor or another is difficult to do. Like the Down East humorists, he was a master of colorful language, understatement, and well-placed ancillary digressions, but he refused to write mangled dialogue in an endearing Down East accent to get a laugh. He preferred to get his laughs from carefully crafted essays written with elegance and style in the manner of the literary comedians of the late nineteenth century. Nor does his style mesh with the Little Man school and its self-deprecating form of humor that prevailed at the New Yorker when Gould launched his career. Gould’s Maine characters were not inept in their encounter with the world; they flourished by shunning the illusory trappings of modern life in favor of the simple pleasures of rural living. What sets Gould apart from other humorists is the distinctly Maine flavor of his writing. Maine humor, like Maine literature, is defined by its treatment of place, people, and language. As Gould noted in one of his book reviews, a Maine author is one who can communicate Maine “people, their talk, their thoughts, their geography and their way of life” (“Down East Nepenthe,” 121).12Place is vital to Maine humor because it sets the scene for stories. Life in Maine is rugged. The weather is demanding, the soil is inhospitable, and the sea is rough and unforgiving. Despite these obstacles, Mainers choose to live there and make the best of the adversity they face. “They don’t waste breath whining about things that can’t be helped—like northeast gales and frost in July—but save their energy for picking up the pieces,” Louis Dickinson Rich notes, adding that “if they make mistakes, they take the consequences, applying to nobody for aid, lest they be beholden.”13 Rather than despair over troubles, a Mainer strives to make the best of the situation and even often finds humor in times of trouble. Gould believed that Maine people have “a native ability to see humor” in their own way and that “every opportunity was embraced.”14 Trying situations such as catching a heifer when she escapes from the barn in the middle of the winter (you never catch a heifer, according to Gould; you just chase her around until she allows herself to be caught or until she goes back into the barn on her own), falling through the ice when harvesting ice, hunting and fishing (legal and illegal) are part of Maine life and offer fertile ground for humorous situations.15Finding humor in adversity is illustrated by the following excerpt from Farmer Takes a Wife. In this passage, Gould demonstrates the Maine outlook on the burdens of winter and adopts a tolerant, humorous approach to setting straight those “from away” whose ideas about winter are naïve:As Bill Sawyer notes, Mainers’ concise, direct way of speaking is an outgrowth of the struggle of daily living in a harsh environment.17 Mainers are constantly preparing for winter or enduring it, so there is no occasion to waste time or words. “Maine men economize on words by stating the thing completely the first time,” Gould observes. “Since he leaves nothing out, he doesn’t have to repeat anything.”18 Gould elaborates on Mainers’ taciturn ways in one of his yarns. A visitor to the community pressed the local physician to explain why Mainers don’t make small talk with visitors. Maine people have an unwritten rule, Doc Plummer explains, “that nobody says anything unless he can improve on the silence.”19 Gould follows this bit of insight with a story that exemplifies the Mainer’s frugal use of language.Gould’s humorous tales are predicated on characters and situations. Most of his characters are local personalities, such as harbor master Cappy Dixon, Great Northern Paper gate operator Del Bates, local police chief Billy Edwards—real people who lived and worked in Gould’s hometown. Other characters were not as easily identifiable since they were often one step ahead of the law or caught in an embarrassing predicament. In the early 1900s, most Mainers hunted and fished to supplement their diets and guided people “from away” to supplement their income. One such character was Flint Johnson, who was loathe to let legality get in the way of hunting and fishing, especially if the opportunity was ripe, so Gould always referred to him as Flats Jackson in his stories to shield him from public ridicule or prosecution. One time Gould was giving Jackson a ride home after a fishing excursion. As they passed a grassy knoll with a big pine tree, Jackson reminisced about the time he came upon that spot and saw five deer standing under the pine tree. “He dwelt in his mind’s eye for a moment and I drove along,” Gould notes. “Then he said, ‘Handsomest sight I ever saw. Late September, so the law was on and they weren’t shy. Two bucks, two does, and a spikehorn. Beautiful!’” After a pause, Jackson said, “’You know—it’s one helluva job to dress out five deer all at once!”20Knowing the characters in a community and watching them closely yields incidents worthy of a good yarn. These stories center on everyday events that are rendered humorous by the character’s response to them. One of Gould’s characters who produced many a situation was Cappy Dixon. Dixon was a short man with a humpback who made his living running rum and later years as the harbormaster in South Freeport harbor. The harbormaster inspected ships, directed traffic, and oversaw comings and goings of a small harbor. On a normal day this was a rather mundane job, but one day a naval destroyer sailed into Freeport Harbor for repairs. With the audacity of one who is no respecter of men, Dixon made the admiral of the naval destroyer undergo the same sort of inspection that local ship captains endured. The admiral was so taken with Dixon that he invited him to stay for dinner and drinks and personally rowed Dixon back to his boat in the harbor when the evening was done (This Trifling Distinction, 42–51).Place, language, character, and situation come together in a master spinning of a yarn. “Like all first rate humorists,” Henry Beston writes in his review of one of Gould’s books, “John Gould is able to tell a really poignant story when such a tale becomes a part of his picture. His style remains his very own, laconic, colloquial, with the manner of a good storyteller’s speech, yet always a vigorous part of the realm of the written word.”21 The art of storytelling is the final characteristic of Maine humor. A good Maine story mirrors the measured pace of life in Maine. The struggle to survive in Maine is not one of quiet desperation but quiet determination and grit. The slow and steady pace of working and living in Maine leads to a style of storytelling that proceeds in like manner, providing ample opportunity for the storyteller to go off on an ancillary digression that sets up the understated conclusion of the story. Gould’s essays are written in a patient style, as if he had all the time in the world to share his engaging tale with the reader. He often starts with a brief story, taking care not to leave out any significant details, drifts into a second, seemingly unrelated tale or two before circling back to the original story, building up slowly to his understated, humorous point or moral to his original story. Perhaps one of the best examples of Gould’s storytelling style is his essay “One Way or Another” from You Should Start Sooner.This essay has all of John Gould’s Maine humor elements: place, people, and language. Gould begins his piece with a seemingly nonsensical saying: “This should prove something one way or another,” calling this meaningless statement a reasonable assumption. It takes place in a small town in Maine that exhibits the sense of community found in small towns throughout Maine through the annual Thanksgiving Day chicken pie breakfast. It features local characters such as Mrs. Alzono W. Sawyer, the wife of a local notable, the judge, an “illustrious citizen who was our barber, surveyor, real estate, insurance, notary public, horse-lawyer and magistrate,” and Jim, an “uncultured character whose career was not above reproach.” Each character is introduced in the story with a seemingly unrelated ancillary digression, which comes together at the end of the story. The annual chicken pie breakfast provides a “situation” that leads to a humorous ending. Mrs. Sawyer is approached by Jim, hat in hand, who asks for a chance to atone for his past sins by providing chickens for breakfast. Mrs. Sawyer, brought to tears by Jim’s contrition, agrees, Jim brought the chickens, and no one was the wiser until the next morning when Jim was arrested for stealing the chickens he had donated, which “goes to prove something, one way or another.” The series of seemingly unrelated digressions have returned to the opening point, which the reader has long since forgotten. This tale illustrates why Gould’s work was so popular. As Gould put it, “There persists something about Maine that edifies and amuses the rest of the country” (This Trifling Distinction, n.p.). Especially if the tale is told by a master craftsman like Gould.