Aug 15, 2008 03:26 AM
by Stefan Beck
Joseph Mitchell would have turned 100 this year.
I’d never heard of Mitchell before moving to New York City in 2004. I was given his famous omnibus Up in the Old Hotel by James Panero—at least I think I was. It’s possible that I absconded with it, but it’s the kind of book one should be forgiven for absconding with. This catechism for New Yorkers recently accompanied me on a transcontinental flight—from the West back to the East Coast, incidentally—during which I read Old Mr. Flood (1948) and Joe Gould’s Secret (1965) without once pausing to remark the lousy food or ululating toddlers.
In the Chicago Tribune, Christopher Borrelli has attempted to honor Mitchell’s memory while filling in a pretty big question mark about his career: “Mitchell finished 13 stories for The New Yorker in 1939, his most productive year, and he filed his last story in 1964. Then, for almost 32 years, until he died in 1996, he went to The New Yorker daily, entered his office, quietly shut the door and began typing. But he never finished another story, never filed another word.”
Read Borrelli’s tribute here. But—far more important than that—read Mitchell.