New York, New York

For some reason I hadn't read Joseph Mitchell until recently, when I picked up Joe Gould's Secret at the library. (In case you're slower than I am, which you can't possibly be, Mitchell's story follows the daily rounds of a down-and-out NYC Bowery denizen, Gould, who claimed for years to be working on a project he titled "An Oral History of Our Time.")

It turned out that the book never existed, and this seems to have affected Mitchell in deep and mysterious ways, ultimately leading him to a hellish case of writer's block.

I really enjoyed that, so I went back to the library and checked out My Ears are Bent, Mitchell's 1938 collection of his early newspaper stories.  Mitchell was a roving reporter of the type that seldom works on newspapers these days, and a great storyteller and stylist.  By age 30 he was working at The New Yorker, where he stayed for the rest of his life, though in his later years he didn't produce much.

Reading the book, in conjunction with watching New York:  A Documentary Film, has become a full-immersion in the soul of NYC's past.


TS