Editions

Up in the Old Hotel

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099561590

  • Length: 736  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 32mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 500g

  • RRP: £11.99

Up in the Old Hotel

'The master of a journalistic style long vanished - urbane, lucid, courteous... A masterpiece of observation and storytelling' Ian McEwan

Mitchell is the laureate of old New York. The hidden corners of the city and the people who lived there are his subject. He captured the waterfront rooming-houses , nickel-a-drink saloons, all-night restaurants, the 'visionaries, obsessives, imposters, fanatics, lost souls, the end-is-near street preachers, old Gypsy Kings and old Gypsy Queens, and out-and-out freak-show freaks.' Mitchell's trademark curiosity, respect and graveyard humour fuel these magical essays.

Written between 1943 and 1965, Up in the Old Hotel is the complete collection of Joseph Mitchell 's New Yorker journalism and includes McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr Flood, The Bottom of the Harbour and Joe Gould's Secret.


'Joseph Mitchell is buried treasure' Salman Rushdie

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099561590

  • Length: 736  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 32mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 500g

  • RRP: £11.99

Reviews

  • This is a book about New York as it was a long time ago… Mitchell is interested in the texture of the city. He loves the cops and bums and old Italian restaurants. After a while you really feel engrained in the place yourself

    William Leith, Evening Standard

  • Swift, razor-sharp characterisation, narrative suspense and the sparest, yet most penetrating description

    Evening Standard

  • One of the greatest journalists America has produced

    Times Literary Supplement

  • What James Joyce might have written had he gone into journalism

    Newsweek

  • A poet of the waterfront and a writer of surpassing tales that captured the unsung and unconventional life of New York and its denizens

    Independent

More from this Author

About the Author

Joseph Mitchell

Joseph Mitchell was born near Iona, North Carolina, in 1908, and came to New York City in 1929, when he was twenty-one years old. He eventually found a job as an apprentice crime reporter for The World. He also worked as a reporter and features writer at The Herald Tribune and The World-Telegram before landing at The New Yorker in 1938. "Joe Gould's Secret," which appeared on September 26th 1964, was the last piece Mitchell ever published. He went into work at The New Yorker almost every day for the next thirty-one years and six months but submitted no further writing.

Joseph Mitchell

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies on this site to enable certain parts of the site to function and to collect information about your use of the site so that we can improve our visitors’ experience.

For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here

Strictly Necessary

Strictly Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions. See More.

Analytics

Analytics cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. These cookies may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. See More.

Preferences & Features

Preference and Feature cookies allow our website to remember choices you make, such as your language preferences and any customisations you make to pages on our website during your visit. See More.

Targeting / Advertising

Targeting cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests. They perform functions like preventing the same content from reappearing, ensuring ads are displayed and, in some cases, selecting content based on your interests. See More.