@farmerman,
Farmer - have you read anything by Joseph Mitchel?
Up in the Old Hotel: Reportage from "the New Yorker" Jul 15, 2015
by Joseph Mitchell, David Remnick
( 319 )
Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a 93-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades. These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style.
These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.
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Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback , Spiral-bound , MP3 CD
My Ears Are Bent Nov 24, 2010
by Joseph Mitchell
( 61 )
Famed New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, as a young newspaper reporter in 1930s New York, interviewed fan dancers, street evangelists, voodoo conjurers, not to mention a lady boxer who also happened to be a countess. Mitchell haunted parts of the city now vanished: the fish market, burlesque houses, tenement neighborhoods, and storefront churches. Whether he wrote about a singing first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers or a nudist who does a reverse striptease, Mitchell brilliantly illuminated the humanity in the oddest New Yorkers.
These pieces, written primarily for The World-Telegram and The Herald Tribune, highlight his abundant gifts of empathy and observation, and give us the full-bodied picture of the famed New Yorker writer Mitchell would become.
Old Mr Flood Apr 11, 2012
by Joseph Mitchell, Charles McGrath
( 23 )
Originally published in the mid-1940s, Old Mr. Flood is Joseph Mitchell’s story of retired house wrecker Hugh G. Flood, a New Yorker determined to live to the age of 115 on a diet of fresh seafood, harbor air, and good Scotch. Mitchell created an unforgettable character in these stories of fish-eating, whiskey, death, and rebirth by combining aspects of several men who worked at or frequented Manhattan’s famed Fulton Fish Market along the East River.
Reporter Joseph Mitchell, regarded by many as one of the finest writers of the twentieth century, pioneered an honest, colorful and declarative style of journalism while writing brilliant magazine pieces for the New Yorker until his death in 1996.
In 1992, most of his New Yorker pieces were collected in a New York Times best-seller omnibus titled Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories, introducing his masterful craftsmanship and storytelling technique to a new generation of readers.
“Mr. Flood, like many of the characters Mitchell wrote about in the New Yorker, conveys in his very being the aura of old New York…Mr. Flood is unforgettable.”
Los Angeles Times
“In the 1940s one of the century’s best reporters prowled the Fulton Fish Market to find a story. He came up with Hugh Flood, who spends his time eating clams, drinking scotch and cheating death. An amazing portrait of a New York long since paved over.”
Playboy
“Mitchell is a pioneer of the long quote in journalism and a master of making it sing.”
Village Voice
“Readers won’t quickly forget Flood or his friends…Life should be lived, Flood observes, and failing to do so will leave you empty, much the same as passing over Mitchell’s writing will do.”
Pages Magazine
“…nuanced, insightful, and painstakingly lifelike…a memorable tale of a vanished urban landscape that seems just as significant today as it did some 60 years ago.”
Time Out Chicago
“The ability to stay out of a story – learned as a beat reporter in his pre-New Yorker days – was part of Mitchell’s enduring strength, and it’s on display in Old Mr. Flood…Mitchell treated all his ‘characters’ with consummate dignity, and brought them alive through the microscopic precision of his peerless prose.”
Hartford Advocate
“…one of the best world-sketchers of his (or probably any other) era…It is a work of joy, of genius, and of blessed memory – a gift from the past for those of us who remember people like this – and a wishful reminder for those who came too late to know them.”
The Courier-Gazette
“Old school is new again…”
7x7 Magazine
“For those raised to believe journalism isn't good unless it's self-aggrandizing, the publication in book form of Joseph Mitchell's Old Mr. Flood is the perfect antidote.”
San Francisco Bay Guardian
“Here’s one that will make you smile. You’ll call up your friends and read passages over the phone…This slim little volume, celebrating a part of the city that has just now vanished forever, is a delight.”
Ann LaFarge, Constant Reader
“The epitome of the independent spirit that characterized so many of his generation, Mr. Flood is essential Americana, an individual who is proud of his achievement – justifiably so.”
Curledup.com
“The book isn’t long—only 118 pages—but it is mesmerizing, as you get lost to the sounds and smells of Manhattan’s harbor.
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The Bottom of the Harbor Jul 1, 2008
by Joseph Mitchell
( 32 )
On the centennial of Joseph Mitchell's birth, here is a new edition of the classic collection containing his most celebrated pieces about New York City. Fifty years after its original publication, The Bottom of the Harbor is still considered a fundamental New York book. Every story Mitchell tells, every person he introduces, every scene he describes is illuminated by his passion for the eccentrics and eccentricities of his beloved adopted city.
All of the pieces here are connected in one way or another--some directly, some with a kind of mysterious circuitousness--to New York's fabled waterfront, the terrain that Mitchell brilliantly made his own. They tell of a life that has passed--of vacant hotel rooms, deserted communities, once-thriving fishing areas that are now polluted and studded with wrecks. Included are "Up in the Old Hotel," a portrait of Louis Morino, the proprietor of a restaurant called (to his disgust) Sloppy Louie's; "The Rats on the Waterfront," which has inspired countless writers to attempt portraits of these most demonized New Yorkers; and "Mr. Hunter's Grave," widely considered to be the finest single piece of nonfiction to have ever appeared in the pages of The New Yorker.
Joe Gould's Secret Jan 26, 2016
by Joseph Mitchell
( 59 )
$11.99
The story of a notorious New York eccentric and the journalist who chronicled his life: “A little masterpiece of observation and storytelling” (Ian McEwan).
Joseph Mitchell was a cornerstone of the New Yorker staff for decades, but his prolific career was shattered by an extraordinary case of writer’s block. For the final thirty-two years of his life, Mitchell published nothing. And the key to his silence may lie in his last major work: the biography of a supposed Harvard grad turned Greenwich Village tramp named Joe Gould.
Gould was, in Mitchell’s words, “an odd and penniless and unemployable little man who came to this city in 1916 and ducked and dodged and held on as hard as he could for over thirty-five years.” As Mitchell learns more about Gould’s epic Oral History—a reputedly nine-million-word collection of philosophizing, wanderings, and hearsay—he eventually uncovers a secret that adds even more intrigue to the already unusual story of the local legend.
Originally written as two separate pieces (“Professor Sea Gull” in 1942 and then “Joe Gould’s Secret” twenty-two years later), this magnum opus captures Mitchell at his peak. As the reader comes to understand Gould’s secret, Mitchell’s words become all the more haunting.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Joseph Mitchell including rare images from the author’s estate.
He talks to working peope who use their hands and tools, gets into their lives; all written before the 60's, its like going into a time machine.
He's a good read no matter what what he writes about. After 'Joe Gould' he became famous for for a twenty year writer's block -he went to work at New Yorker every day and shut the door to his office until he left for the day.
