Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell: Have you ever heard people in your book club talk about how “place is a character in this book” and wonder what they hell they meant? Joseph Mitchell taught me what it meant. His book—a writerly portrait of New York City—is as much about the buildings and streets, the piers, fishing boats and river banks, the markets and parks and old brownstones and streetcars and dingy bars as it is about the people sitting inside drinking watered-down beer or haggling with each other over fish at four a.m. at the docks. Up in the Old Hotel is one of the most beautiful books ever written, but it could have been written without ever mentioning a single person and it would still be a story. Somehow, Mitchell makes even buildings and stones and oily black fishing boats speak...full review

One of the founding documents of modern literary nonfiction. Under today's standards, Mitchell would probably be in trouble since he conflated characters -- but the writing is divine and the portrait of a now-vanished city -- which was vanishing even as Mitchell wrote these pieces in the '30s, is unforgettable. ( )

What makes the New Yorker so distinctive is great writing, like this. Mitchell is a master, and if he wrote a thousand page book about paint scrapings I'd buy it. This is a superlative collection of pieces from the New Yorker. Fabulous writing. ( )

This is one of my favorite books of all time. The stories evoke 1920s-30s New York in an utterly engaging, charming way. The characters are strange and fascinating, the writing is lapidary. Anyone who wants to learn how to write should make a study of this book. ( )

Stories about New York City and environs, by New Yorker essayist.
Joseph Mitchell was a fine essay writer. He apparently enjoyed walking around New York City, visiting neighborhoods and places where he could sniff old, original city industries: especially the salty industries, anything that involved clams, oysters, fish. The essays are nostalgic, each portrait of each character (tattooed lady, the owners of McSorley's Saloon, the caretaker of a cemetery, oyster captains, oyster eaters) fond and smoky and exact. The nostalgia here, and the various casts of characters who belong in the nineteenth century but have somehow hung on into the twentieth, remind me of Country of the Pointed Firs by Jewett. ( )