Up in the Old Hotel

This is a wonderful and readable collection of Mitchell's essays, in which he lovingly describes haunts like the Fulton Fish Market and McSorley's, one of the last bars in America to admit women, and profiles various folk and colorful denizens of New York City's nether regions, most famously, Joe Gould, the bohemian character with whom he is inevitably and eternally linked. Mitchell demonstrates great skill as a writer by letting his subjects seemingly speak for themselves, all the while rendering their words in compulsively readable fashion. This works best with Joe Gould who was a fountain of words anyway. The story tells of Gould, a Harvard grad, subsisting on practically no money (one of his tricks is to make a soup out of the show more ketchup in restaurants), with a propensity for making a spectacle of himself as he starts flapping his arms and declaiming poetry in the "language" of sea gulls. It shows how he works on his nine million word Oral History of Our Time. Within the pages of hundreds of composition books, of the kind we used to use in school, Gould claimed to be writing a history of the world in the form of the conversations of ordinary people as he heard them speaking every day ""What people say is history." (Reminds me of Studs Terkel). It was this idea that beguiled Mitchell and his readers, made Gould into a minor celebrity, and ultimately formed a tragicomic link to Mitchell's own career. show less

Undoubtedly one of the finest books I have ever read. Joseph Mitchell is one of the greatest if not greatest American literary journalists of the 20th century, and probably all-time. On the surface it's written in the genre of human interest stories for the New Yorker. The subjects are old bars, wharfs, watermen and street people around New York mostly in the 1930s and 1940s. There is a mixture of anthropology and lyricism to it like Dickens and Zola. The test is in how well does it re-read - two stories I had read about a year ago and on re-reading them again it was a new experience. The detail is so dense and finely woven, it's impossible not to keep finding treasures in the same text. Despite the length I can't wait to read this show more again someday. My love for this book probably is not hurt by my grandfather who was a boatman in and around the New York harbour in the 1940s and 50s. Through Mitchell I got a taste of his time and world which is a great gift. show less

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.

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, show more Mitchell makes even buildings and stones and oily black fishing boats speak...full review show less

This edition is a collection of four books written by Joseph Mitchell, late essayist for the New Yorker. The essays contained therein cover the period from the late 1930's to the early 1950's. The essays, which amount to a common history of life in New York, are noteworthy for three reasons.

First, Mitchell was a keen observer of everyday life. Rather than painting scenic vistas of New York living, he gives us the fine details that make the scenic vista possible. His characters are every-day people, living every-day lives in an every-day environment, and he instills in them a dignity a casual observer would overlook.

Second, Mitchell has a profound respect for the tradition of oral history. His characters have something to say about their show more world, and Mitchell is careful to capture these observations in their finest details. There is a point, there: we are the sum of what has come before us, and to understand ourselves we need to be mindful of those who are responsible for our being here. Maybe the saddest thing is that the oral history tradition Mitchell highlights is becoming lost to contemporary society.

Finally, Mitchell is a master at presenting his characters. Serious writers couldn't do better than to read Mitchell's work to learn how to develop a fine character sketch, producing not just a character occupying space in the world, but as people who both stand out with their own intrinsic value, and who add the richness to the world around them. show less

I've read this book many times over. It just never gets old. Mitchell's nonfiction reads like good fiction, and his profiles of the bums, outcasts, and miscreants of New York are poignant and heartbreaking and sometimes exalting. Ironically, his attempts at fiction fall short of his profiles, but they still retain the same graveyard humor. This is one book not to be missed.

Well let me change from day today this book currently is in my top 10 favorite books. Mitchell was a long time reporter for various New York newspapers in later than New York or during the first half of the 1900s. His pieces are wonderful slices of New York history told through various character sketches and regions of New York that has long since disappeared. Each story is a gym starting with McSorley‘s old Ale House and moving onto other colorful characters such as Maisie who ran a movie theater on the lower Eastside waterman fisherman oysterman who worked the docs around New York Harbor and the Fulton fishmarket. He captures since of long last New York through a character Joe Gould described as a true Greenwich Village bohemian. show more Highly recommend. show less