“On religion and the hereafter”: JM, “Old Mr. Flood,” UITOH, p. 375.
“On life”: JM, “The Black Clams,” UITOH, p. 408.
“All the things I said in there about eating fish”: JM interview with NS.
“Joe was a man who dwelt at great length”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“Sometimes facts don’t tell the truth”: JM interview with NS.
was “appalled” by the idea of continuing: Ibid.
“As a reporter of the New York scene”: New York Herald Tribune, 10/24/48.
the Mr. Flood pieces “fiction of the highest”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
CHAPTER 9: THE BOTTOM OF THE HARBOR
“I’m enclosing a clipping”: JM to Ellery Thompson, 5/13/48.
“a fascinating book to anyone interested”: JM to Daniel deNoyelles, 6/12/78.
“Books, so many books”: Interview with NMS.
“I [wrote] with a kind of shorthand”: JM interview with NS.
“If you’re going to have lunch with him”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“He butchered according to Leviticus”: JM journal note, April 1989.
“Mitchell invented a temporal dimension”: Village Voice, 4/29/05.
His desk held a glass full of “needle-sharp pencils”: Gardner Botsford, A Life of Privilege, Mostly, p. 149.
Nonfiction writing “has to have a lyricism”: JM interview with NS.
“I’d insert maybe three commas”: Interview with Gardner Botsford.
“[He] took forever to write a piece”: Botsford: A Life of Privilege, Mostly, p. 196.
“I would report that I’ve read”: Harold Ross to JM, 7/26/49.
“This climax is a tremendous letdown”: Perrin, “Paragon of Reporters: Joseph Mitchell.”
“articles about old restaurants were getting to be”: JM journal note, 6/27/78.
“remember conversations word for word”: JM journal, undated.
“Something that Louie said after we came down”: JM interview with NS.
CHAPTER 10: MR. HUNTER
“You had to make every edge cut”: JM reporting notes for “Mr. Hunter’s Grave.”
“[E]very time I read the Anna Livia Plurabelle section”: JM, UITOH, p. xii.
“He knew that everything had fallen apart”: The New York Times, 7/22/92.
“The revelations that keep coming”: JM interview with NS.
“I couldn’t really write about anybody”: Ibid.
“At The New Yorker, and in nonfiction writing”: Ben Yagoda, About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made, p. 401.
it was difficult to say “how much…is gospel and how much”: Ibid.
“[This] manifestly is not quote at all”: Ibid.
“Yes, there was something literary”: Interview with Dan Frank.
“If you find [a subject]”: JM interview with NS.
“We don’t know what the hell is going on”: JM interview with NS.
“I’ve been reading your pieces”: John Davenport to JM, 10/19/56.
“We are observing”: George Hunter to JM, 12/10/56.
CHAPTER 11: A RIVER IN A DREAM
“I really don’t know how they did it”: Interview with NMS.
Therese would “saunter down the street”: NMS, in an introduction to an exhibition of Therese Mitchell photographs, July 2006.
“He was so canonical”: NMS family memoir.
“He…spoke to his family every Sunday”: Ibid.
“He generally thought people were pretty horrible”: Interview with NMS.
“I told him…how that traumatized me”: Ibid.
“As I said, either ‘harbour’ or ‘harbor’ ”: JM to Ivan Von Auw, Jr., 10/14/61.
“Listen, Nick,” Mitchell snapped, “when I feel like”: (Fredericksburg, Va.) Free Lance-Star, 11/17/41.
could “suddenly become a different person”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“is generally the way he reacted”: NMS family memoir.
his “genius for finding real-life metaphors”: The Washington Post, 7/21/85.
“The memorable things in The Bottom of the Harbor”: The New York Times, 4/24/60.
“One day [Ross] put his head in my office”: JM to James Thurber, 8/24/57.
“When I first came to The New Yorker”: Ibid.
“Mr. Liebling, if you’re expecting”: JM journal note, undated.
“someone had beaten [us] to the punch”: JM interview with NS.
“If [Mitchell] ever disappears”: Gill, Here at The New Yorker, p. 319.
His “antiquarianism was obsessive”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“He had enormous collections of old bricks”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 12: JOE GOULD REVISITED
“In this state,” Mitchell wrote: JM, “Joe Gould’s Secret,” UITOH, p. 681.
“I was exasperated”: Ibid., p. 687.
“I have been working on [it]”: JM to Clayton Hoagland, 5/1/63.
“a New Yorker Profile that I’ve been working on”: JM to Roy Wilder, Jr., 11/17/63.
“You’d love London, I think”: St. Clair McKelway to JM, 8/6/57.
“You could hear Liebling”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“Every Christmas since 1963”: JM to Jean Stafford, 1/23/78.
“Everybody sat for a while”: JM eulogy for A. J. Liebling, January 1964.
“Then we realize that Gould has been Mitchell”: Hyman, “The Art of Joseph Mitchell.”
Gould “is Mitchell’s nightmare vision of himself”: Christopher Carduff, “Fish-eating, Whiskey, Death & Rebirth,” The New Criterion, November 1992.
“To me a very tragic thing”: JM interview with NS.
“bolsters rather than contradicts Mitchell’s suspicions”: Village Voice, 4/7/00.
CHAPTER 13: INTO THE PAST
“My share in the proceeds”: JM to A. N. Mitchell, 7/23/64.
“One day the producer called me up”: JM to Rose Wharton, 10/21/64.
“Afterwards, we went over to the Ritz-Carlton”: Ibid.
“No one on the eighteenth floor”: Susan Sheehan to JM, 9/24/64.
“Joseph Mitchell is one of our finest journalists”: The Washington Post, 9/19/65.
“Mitchell is a formidable prose stylist”: Hyman, “The Art of Joseph Mitchell.”
“When the New Journalists came ashore”: Norman Sims, True Stories: A Century of Literary Journalism, p. 165.
“We never thought of ourselves as experimenting”: JM interview with author.
“I was a reporter, and then I became a magazine writer”: JM journal note, undated.
“I didn’t have a whole lot of interest”: JM to Evan Elliot, 10/10/90.
“he fed that alligator everything he could think of”: JM interview for the North Carolina Awards, 1984.
The Robesonian—“a novel I have been reading”: JM unfinished autobiography.
“I especially liked it because it linked me”: JM to Roy Parker, October 1983.
“After I’m down in North Carolina”: JM interview with NS.
“a town in which I grew up”: JM unfinished autobiography.
“We always thought Joe would come back”: Interview with Harry Mitchell.
“I have offered to give [Joseph] the McCall farm”: Interview with David Britt.
wielding a “long carving knife”: JM journal note, 7/28/74.
“See if the commode will flush”: Ibid.
“One of the reasons I got so depressed”: Ibid., 1974.
“I very rarely feel altogether at ease”: Ibid., 7/29/74.
“I no longer have much enthusiasm for New York City”: JM to Roy Wilder, Jr., 8/12/72.
“I know the exact day that I began living in the past”: JM unfinished autobiography.
“I was very sure that he was seeing”: JM journal notes, undated.
“In other words”: JM to Ellery Thompson, 12/18/75.
“The reason I have hesitated to write to you”: JM to K. C. Butler,
9/22/76.
“I am only now beginning to realize”: JM journal note, undated.
“I wanted his respect”: (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer, 8/16/92.
“No matter how boring it may sound”: JM to Ann Honeycutt, 3/14/77.
CHAPTER 14: INTO THE WILDERNESS
“Except for Maron Simon”: JM to Thomas Waring, 6/4/81.
“they simply weren’t representative”: JM journal note, undated.
He was “distinctly a New Yorker”: JM interview with Ben Yagoda.
“What I must establish as quickly as possible”: JM journal note, undated.
“Well, take it easy”: Ibid.
“I got to be like the younger brother”: JM interview with Ben Yagoda.
“Listening to Joe talk about her”: The New York Times, 12/29/96.
“We had without ever talking about it”: JM journal note, undated.
“I went back into the kitchen”: Ibid.
“I began to be oppressed”: JM unfinished autobiography.
“use myself as the center”: JM journal note, undated.
Shawn called it “some of the best writing”: Ibid., 5/14/70.
Shawn was “content to wait”: Interview with Charles McGrath.
“That was an embarrassment to me”: JM interview with NS.
“that costs two hundred dollars each time”: This and subsequent comments about his finances from JM’s journal notes, circa 1970.
Mitchell was being “sidetracked” by a variety of things: JM interview with NS.
“He gave me the impression”: JM journal note, 4/6/77.
“Find out the year the old barn”: JM journal notes, undated.
they are “ragweed, Jimson weed, pavement weed”: JM, “Mr. Hunter’s Grave,” UITOH, p. 529.
“Setting these objects side by side”: Luc Sante in foreword to reissue of JM’s The Bottom of the Harbor, 2008.
Mitchell thought it “the best restaurant in the city”: JM to Linda Mitchell Lamm, 1/20/64.
“He had strong feelings about it”: NMS family memoir.
he came to “believe wholeheartedly”: JM to E. Virgil Conway, 12/11/74.
“In 1970, James Cameron”: JM unpublished essay on McSorley’s, January 1979.
“Why don’t you give up farming”: JM to Francis Hayes, 9/3/85.
“I’d be telling her it was going to get better”: (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer, 8/16/92.
Therese at this time “sounded woozy”: Interview with David Crowley.
“When she was in Marblehead”: JM journal note, undated.
“She had a loving heart”: Ibid., circa autumn 1980.
“One of my most haunting memories”: Interview with Elizabeth Mitchell.
CHAPTER 15: A GHOST IN PLAIN VIEW
“After she died”: NMS in an undated essay on her mother.
he held some “unease as a native of his Baptist”: Brendan Gill at JM memorial tribute, 10/7/96.
“I’m a ghost”: The New York Times, 5/25/96.
a book that he’d “had to postpone”: JM to Thomas Waring, 6/4/81.
“It’s just like Trinity—so arrogant”: Interview with Kent Barwick.
“He knew the history of every”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“He was always very generous”: Interview with Kent Barwick.
“I am now one of the Commissioners”: JM to Noel Perrin, 9/28/83.
“I glanced over in the corner”: JM journal note, 1/21/88.
“I’m saloonable”: Ibid., undated.
“He just had this look about him”: This and subsequent story from an interview with Ian Frazier.
“Every day you had a Joe sighting”: Interview with Charles McGrath.
calling it “the most impressive article”: JM to Jonathan Schell, 2/8/82.
“it was not bemusement at all”: Interview with Charles McGrath.
“Joe had a hyperintelligence”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“I am afraid [I am] almost obsessively”: JM to Shelagh and John Metcalf, 12/18/90.
“a jumble of emotions”: Interview with Elizabeth Mitchell.
she caught “the note of suppressed panic”: Janet Groth, The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker, p. 38.
“Sometimes I just wish they’d fire me”: Remarks by Roy Wilder, Jr., on JM’s induction into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, 5/17/97.
“lack of productivity [at The New Yorker] is neither”: Gill, Here at The New Yorker, p. 314.
“Not writing was not that unusual”: Interview with Calvin Trillin.
“A number of years ago, after brooding”: JM to Addison Potter, 6/23/82.
“It drove me into the worst slump”: JM to John McNulty, 12/30/45.
“that bleak and hollow remoteness”: JM to Addison Potter, 6/23/82.
CHAPTER 16: UP IN THE OLD HOTEL
“Your letter is one of the first”: JM to Lucretia Edwards, 7/29/93.
“He was horribly tormented”: Interview with Marie Winn.
“I read it and I was just astonished”: This and subsequent story from interview with Calvin Trillin.
“I have in common with Joe”: Interview with Dan Frank.
“I’d like it to be a kind of surprise”: New York, 2/9/87.
“the editorial staff was not a party”: William Shawn note to The New Yorker staff, 3/8/85.
“I tried to explain to him”: JM journal note, 2/12/87.
“Can you take another year”: Ibid., 10/16/87.
“I liked him, liked his work”: Mark Singer, “Joe Mitchell’s Secret,” The New Yorker, 2/22/99.
“Joe, I don’t know how to persuade”: Dan Frank to JM, 5/22/91.
he was “writing it in his mind”: Interview with Charles McGrath.
“I haven’t had a book published”: The New York Times, 7/22/92.
“That city, the one in which”: The New York Times, 8/16/92.
“I just hope I can hold on”: (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer, 8/16/92.
CHAPTER 17: HOMECOMING
“My name is Mitchell” story: Interview with Sheila McGrath.
“Joe was a great believer in talismans”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
Telling him “it is still my dream”: Tina Brown to JM, 4/28/94.
discouraged by “old colleagues retiring”: JM to Peter Shepherd, 12/31/92.
“There was so much I still wanted”: Singer, “Joe Mitchell’s Secret.”
the daughters were “grateful most of all”: JM funeral eulogy by Thomas L. Rich Jr., 5/28/96.
“When you look at his work”: Interview with Dan Frank.
“I do not know of anyone whose writing”: Addison Potter to JM, 6/17/82.
“Why didn’t he write more”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“Joe glowed”: Susan DiSesa at JM memorial tribute, 10/7/96.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
American Caravan IV, Alfred Kreymborg, Lewis Mumford, and Paul Rosenfeld, eds. New York: Macauley, 1931.
“An Appreciation of Joseph Mitchell,” Raymond J. Rundus, ed. Pembroke Magazine, No. 26, 1994.
The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism, Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda, eds. New York: Touchstone, 1997.
Baker, Russell. “Out of Step with the World.” The New York Review of Books, 9/20/01.
Beller, Thomas. “The Old Man and the Seafood.” The Village Voice, 4/29/05.
Bernstein, Burton. Thurber: A Biography. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975.
Blount, Roy, Jr. “Joe Mitchell’s Secret.” The Atlantic Monthly, August 1992.
Bosworth, Patricia. Diane Arbus: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984.
Botsford, Gardner. A Life of Privilege, Mostly: A Memoir. New York: St. Martin’s, 2003.
Bourke, Angela. Maeve Brennan: Homesick at The New Yorker. New York: Counterpoint, 2004.
Carduff, Christopher. “Fish-eating, Whiskey, Death & Rebirth.” The New Criterion, November 1992.
Carrington,
Tucker. “The Grammar of Hard Facts: Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel.” Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1996.
Corey, Mary F. The World Through a Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury. Cambridge: Harvard, 1999.
Cowley, Malcolm. “The Grammar of Facts.” The New Republic, 7/26/43.
Emery, Edwin. The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
Gill, Brendan. Here at The New Yorker. New York: Random House, 1975.
Groth, Janet. The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2012.
Hyman, Stanley Edgar. “The Art of Joseph Mitchell.” The New Leader, 12/6/65.
“Joseph Mitchell.” Reminiscences by various New Yorker writers. The New Yorker, 6/10/96.
Kinney, Harrison. James Thurber: His Life and Times. New York: Henry Holt, 1995.
Kluger, Richard. The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.
Life Stories: Profiles From The New Yorker, David Remnick, ed. New York: Random House, 2000.
Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century, Norman Sims, ed. New York: Oxford, 1990.
Kunkel, Thomas. Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of The New Yorker. New York: Random House, 1995.
Mehta, Ved. Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook, 1998.
Mitchell, Joseph. My Ears Are Bent. New York: Sheridan, 1938.
———. McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1943.
———. Old Mr. Flood. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948.
———. The Bottom of the Harbor. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960.
———. Joe Gould’s Secret. New York: Viking, 1965.
———. Up in the Old Hotel, and Other Stories. New York: Pantheon, 1992.
The New American Caravan, Alfred Kreymborg, Lewis Mumford, and Paul Rosenfeld, eds. New York: Macauley, 1929.
Perrin, Noel. “Paragon of Reporters: Joseph Mitchell.” The Sewanee Review, Spring 1983.
Rogers, James. “Old Men in Graveyards: Joseph Mitchell’s Dialogue with Seumas O’Kelly.” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Spring 2009.
Ross, Lillian. Here But Not Here: A Love Story. New York: Random House, 1998.
———. Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism. Washington: Counterpoint, 2002.
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