A review by earlyandalone
Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

This was such an interesting and different read for me. It's tales of old New York—not gritty 1970s murdery NYC, but OLD New York, like pre-television New York. Mitchell was adept at profiling characters, the kinds of characters that are more rare in New York now if only because they can no longer afford to live there. Those were the pieces I liked best, the pieces exploring people and their environments. As the book progressed, I lost interest a bit-especially in the long pieces about the fishing culture of Long Island, and by the time I reached Joe Gould's Secret, my patience for Joe Gould had long been exhausted. But this was a transporting read during the pandemic, a time when I very much wanted to be transported.