Up in the Old Hotel, and Other Storie..., Joseph Mitchell
Up in the Old Hotel, and Other Storie..., Joseph Mitchell
List: $29.95 | Sale: $20.97
Club: $14.97

Up in the Old Hotel, and Other Stories

Author: Joseph Mitchell, David Remnick

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Unabridged: 28 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/31/2015

Synopsis

Saloon keepers, street preachers, gypsies, steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady, and a ninety-three-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for the New Yorker and in four books—McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould’s Secret—that are still renowned for their respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style.These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.

About Joseph Mitchell

Joseph Mitchell (1908–1996) was born near Iona, North Carolina, and came to New York City in 1929. 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, where he remained until his death.

About David Remnick

David Remnick is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Lenin’s Tomb, his first book, which was selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the nine Best Books of the Year. He is the author of two other books, including a collection of essays. He lives in New York.

About Grover Gardner

Grover Gardner (a.k.a. Tom Parker) is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.

Reviews

Goodreads review by William2 on August 27, 2019

Luc Sante's wonderful Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York is in some ways a pendant piece to Up in the Old Hotel. Though Sante's vision is darker, and he has a keener eye for the con, it's as if both he and Mitchell were coming at the material from different angles. Sante is a cultural histor......more

Goodreads review by Steve on June 18, 2012

This is one of the books I had to ration because I never wanted it to end. Of all the writers who have taken New York City as their subject, none is better than Joseph Mitchell. I once referred to "the Joseph Mitchell tradition" to Fran Lebowitz in conversation and she shot back: "That's not a tradi......more

Goodreads review by Tim on April 15, 2017

In this collection of pieces that he wrote for the New Yorker, mostly in the 1940s and 50s, Mitchell takes us to an older and stranger New York. This journalist had an affinity for the oddballs, the eccentrics, the solitary men who despite their flaws had important things to share with the rest of u......more

Goodreads review by Kathleen on January 29, 2012

What is it about me and the old guys these days? I can't seem to get enough of them. Mitchell, a prolific staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, chronicled daily life in hidden corners of New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, from McSorley's Saloon, a men's only bar in the Village, to Gypsy nei......more

Goodreads review by Hannah on February 18, 2024

in the top 3 best books I have read. stopped wanting to write a post about it around halfway through because I loved it so much I almost did not want anyone else to read it—you know how it takes you like that sometimes—the best argument, short of the experience of living, that I have ever seen for b......more

Quotes

“Mitchell’s darkly comic articles are models of big-city journalism…His accounts are like what Joyce might have written had he gone into journalism.” Newsweek

“A legendary figure…Mitchell’s reportage is so vivid, so real, that it comes out like fiction of the highest order.” Chicago Sun-Times

“A song of the streets that casts a wide net and fearlessly embraces everything human…So rich and generous and funny that it ought to stay in print forever.” San Francisco Examiner

“Grover Gardner is amazing here. He creates an intelligent, interested, wry voice for Mitchell that matches his reportorial stance and lets the voices of the many and varied characters who trust and talk to Mitchell take center stage. Gardner evokes, rather than imitates, regional accents when necessary: his Boston is wonderful, his Southern ditto, and his Gypsy King is absolutely hilarious. This is a listening experience to savor and share and return to. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

“This collection promises an uncommon world. And it delivers, in compassionate, wistful examinations of early-20th-century New Yorkers who share a common trait: they exist on the outskirts of society in either habit or mind…Mitchell speaks of facts that enlighten and redeem—the book’s greatest gift.” Publishers Weekly

“Mitchell’s impeccable prose fuses fact with fiction and hums with gentle irony, mischievous delight in people’s peculiarities, and an offhanded yet elegant precision.” Booklist

Awards

  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • New York Public Library Staff Pick
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