The Bottom of the Harbor
by Joseph Mitchell
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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 Harboris 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 show more 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 ofThe New Yorker. Here is the essential work of a legendary writer. From the Hardcover edition. show lessTags
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Evocative writing from unarguably America's finest journalist
Well written-read for a book group-just not my type of book.
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44 works; 3 members
Author Information
10+ Works 2,810 Members
Joseph Mitchell came to New York City in 1929 from a small town in North Carolina. He was twenty-one years old. He worked as a reporter & feature writer--for "The World", "The Herald Tribune", & "The World Telegram"--for eight years, & then went to "The New Yorker", where he remained until his death in 1996. (Bowker Author Biography)
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1959
- Important places
- New York, New York, USA; Edgewater, New Jersey, USA
- Epigraph
- The worms crawl in,
The worms crawl out.
They eat your guts
And spit them out . . .
--Children's Song - Dedication
- To Nora and Elizabeth Mitchell
- Disambiguation notice
- All the stories originally appeared in The New Yorker between April 29, 1944 and April 4, 1959.
Up in the Old Hotel (orig. as 'The Cave', June 28, 1952) --
The Bottom of the Harbor (Jan. 6, 1951) --
The Rats on t... (show all)he Waterfront (orig. as 'Thirty-two Rats from Casablanca,' April 29, 1944) --
Mr. Hunter's Grave (Sept. 22, 1956) --
Dragger Captain (in 2 parts, Jan. 4 & 11, 1947) --
The Rivermen (April 4, 1959).
Note in 2008 Pantheon 1st rev. ed.: Originally published in slightly different form by Little, Brown in 1959. All of the pieces in this work were subsequently collected in Up in the Old Hotel (Pantheon, 1992).
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- Members
- 185
- Popularity
- 176,579
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.29)
- Languages
- English, French, German, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 6
