Description
Book Synopsis''The master of a journalistic style long vanished - urbane, lucid, courteous... A masterpiece of observation and storytelling'' Ian McEwan
Mitchell is the laureate of old New York. The hidden corners of the city and the people who lived there are his subject. He captured the waterfront rooming-houses , nickel-a-drink saloons, all-night restaurants, the ''visionaries, obsessives, imposters, fanatics, lost souls, the end-is-near street preachers, old Gypsy Kings and old Gypsy Queens, and out-and-out freak-show freaks.'' Mitchell''s trademark curiosity, respect and graveyard humour fuel these magical essays.
Written between 1943 and 1965, Up in the Old Hotel is the complete collection of Joseph Mitchell ''s New Yorker journalism and includes McSorley''s Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr Flood, The Bottom of the Harbour and Joe Gould''s Secret.
''Joseph Mitchell is buried treasure'' Salman Rushdie
Trade ReviewThis is a book about New York as it was a long time ago… Mitchell is interested in the texture of the city. He loves the cops and bums and old Italian restaurants. After a while you really feel engrained in the place yourself -- William Leith * Evening Standard *
Swift, razor-sharp characterisation, narrative suspense and the sparest, yet most penetrating description * Evening Standard *
One of the greatest journalists America has produced * Times Literary Supplement *
What James Joyce might have written had he gone into journalism * Newsweek *
A poet of the waterfront and a writer of surpassing tales that captured the unsung and unconventional life of New York and its denizens * Independent *
