Man in Profile
Page 35
Thus this portrait of Joseph Mitchell took much longer than I expected. At times along the way, as one interruption after another slowed my progress, I began to think that Joe’s decades-long writer’s block wasn’t so mystifying after all! Nonetheless, I wish to thank Joe’s family and friends for their unfailing patience with me. I am grateful as well to my colleagues both at Maryland and St. Norbert for their understanding as I pursued this book.
I owe special thanks to Joe’s two daughters, Nora Mitchell Sanborn and Elizabeth Mitchell, who shared so much with me about their father but also, importantly, about their mother, Therese. In addition to sharing their memories, they gave me hundreds of documents, letters, photographs, and other family treasures. And Nora in particular must be acknowledged for writing some years ago an extensive and colorful family history, from which I have drawn liberally.
Joe’s lone surviving sibling, Harry Mitchell, was welcoming to me from the outset. So, too, was Joe’s nephew Jack Mitchell, who still lives in Fairmont in the house adjacent to where Joe grew up. Jack helped me understand not only the family history but the rhythms and routines of farm life in that part of North Carolina. Another of Joe’s nephews, David Crowley, was generous as well with family details and photographs.
Sheila McGrath was Joe’s literary executor, and another New Yorker person I got to know when I was working on the Ross biography. This book would not have been possible without her encouragement and support. Sheila died after a three-year battle with cancer, and her daughter, Ashley Fraser, was very helpful to me as I was bringing the book to a conclusion.
I am deeply grateful to the distinguished critic Norman Sims, a professor in the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Norman is an expert on literary journalism, and in 1988 and 1989 he conducted three interviews with Joe, in which he talked expansively about his writing techniques, theories, and motivations. Norman drew on these interviews for several important publications of his own. But he graciously provided me full transcripts of the Mitchell interviews, which I have mined extensively here. Likewise, another colleague, Ben Yagoda, professor of English and journalism at the University of Delaware, interviewed Joe for his sweeping New Yorker history, About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made, and made the full transcript available to me.
An old friend, Clint Williams, was a lifesaver; he kept me moving with his reporting assistance and copious editorial suggestions and hunches. It was Clint, for instance, who realized that Joe almost certainly suffered from a condition called dyscalculia, the mathematics analog to dyslexia.
Another friend, the late New Yorker writer Philip Hamburger, got me on my way by spending hours remembering Joe and their days together at the magazine. Phil loved Joe and provided great insight into his friend’s quirky and sometimes contradictory personality. I thank as well those other New Yorker friends and colleagues of Joe’s who were especially helpful to me—including, but not limited to, Chip McGrath, Calvin Trillin, Ian Frazier, Roger Angell, Gardner Botsford, Mary Painter, and David Remnick. Thanks also to the specialists at the New York Public Library’s Rare Books and Manuscripts division and to the Center for Oral History at Columbia University.
I’m grateful to Marie Winn, David Britt, Ken Koyen, Roy Wilder, Jr., Kent Barwick, Jack Sargent Harris, and others who spoke to me about Joe. And to Jim Rogers for his expertise on Joe’s writing, Mike Capuzzo for his encouragement and suggestions, and Gene Roberts—like Joe, a treasured son of North Carolina—for his local knowledge, mentoring, and friendship. And as for Amy Sorenson and Jamie McGuire, they make all things possible.
I owe much to Dan Frank, not only for his help with this book but because it was Dan’s tenacity and good judgment that made Up in the Old Hotel a reality and thus introduced Joseph Mitchell to a new generation of fans.
At Random House, David Ebershoff and his associate Caitlin McKenna oversaw this project with acuity and sensitivity, and copy editor Kathleen Lord applied her keen eye and ear. I also want to thank the legendary Bob Loomis. I’m sorry I outlasted you into your well-deserved retirement, Bob, but I’ll be forever grateful to you for signing up this project and believing in it so fervently.
Peter Matson—so patient and discerning and supportive—you’re the best.
Finally, to my wife, Deb, and our family: So many wonderful and momentous things have happened to us in the years this book was aborning. Thank you for your constant support and understanding as I was sharing so much of that time with Joe Mitchell.
—Thomas Kunkel
Summer 2014
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS
JM is Joseph Mitchell
MEAB is My Ears Are Bent
NMS is Nora Mitchell Sanborn
NS is Norman Sims
UITOH is Up in the Old Hotel
CHAPTER 1: THE WONDERFUL SALOON
“As in [Old John’s] time, fresh sawdust”: JM unpublished essay on McSorley’s, January 1979.
“find a chair at one of the round tables”: JM journal note, undated.
“most of the NYC that I knew”: Ibid.
one of the few places left where Mitchell could “escape for a while”: Ibid.
“He is a reporter only in the sense”: Stanley Edgar Hyman, “The Art of Joseph Mitchell,” The New Leader, 12/6/65.
His characters “might have come straight out of Dickens”: Malcolm Cowley, “The Grammar of Facts,” The New Republic, 7/26/43.
CHAPTER 2: THE CENTER OF GRAVITY
“I spent a large part of my childhood”: JM unfinished autobiography.
“From the time I was old enough”: Ibid.
“happens to be a remarkably inexact”: JM, UITOH, p. xvi.
“I used to climb a tremendous white oak”: JM unfinished autobiography.
In early spring of 1896: Interview with David Britt.
“I don’t know if she expected”: NMS family memoir.
“I wasn’t worried about my father”: JM journal note, undated.
A.N. “was very smart and a good businessman”: NMS family memoir.
“A lot of men made their career decision”: Interview with David Britt.
“Know a little something”: JM journal note, undated.
She was “one of the finest women”: Interview with David Britt.
“she must have had a pretty hard life”: NMS family memoir.
“Averette, did your ox fall in the ditch?”: Interview with Sheila McGrath.
“This is for me”: Thomas L. Rich, Jr., JM funeral eulogy, 5/28/96.
the “irritation in his voice”: JM journal note, undated.
“Let the dead bury the dead”: JM interview with NS.
“I never heard my own father”: JM journal note, 1977.
“I’m not in favor of people taking”: Ibid.
“Friend, I have resigned”: JM, “The Downfall of Fascism in Black Ankle County,” UITOH, p. 355.
“They were just little one-ring circuses”: (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer, 8/16/92.
“a veritable carnival”: NMS family memoir.
“My father was very proud”: JM interview with NS.
“God is everywhere”: JM journal note, undated.
He grasped “the significance and provenance”: NMS family memoir.
he “developed an interest in it”: JM journal note, undated.
“How wonderful it was to find them”: JM interview with NS.
“Here and there she would pause”: JM, UITOH, p. xi.
“It was the first time I ever heard” and dynamite story: JM journal note, undated.
“He never said so in so many words”: Ibid.
“You have to be extremely good at arithmetic”: JM interview with NS.
“deliberately or inadvertently”: JM journal note, undated.
“He would ruin meals”: NMS family memoir.
“Go to the board”: JM journal note, 1986.
CHAPTER 3: CHAPEL HILL
“I dimly recollect one
day”: JM to Francis Hayes, 9/3/85.
“his paralysis over mathematics”: NMS family memoir.
“It became obvious”: JM to Rex Stout, 5/9/44.
“I probably learned more about writing”: JM to Jim Kelly, 8/6/76.
“I remember our meetings”: John Armstrong Crow to JM, 9/22/92.
“I knew I had to get some other way”: JM interview with NS.
“I stumbled up the stairs”: JM, “Friday Night,” The Carolina Magazine, June 1928.
“Yuh can trust a good horse”: JM, “The Man Who Liked Horses Better Than Women,” The Carolina Magazine, April 1928.
“He holds out his hand”: JM, “Three Field Sketches,” The Carolina Magazine, March 1928.
“They sat on the porch quietly”: JM, “Cool Swamp and Field Woman,” The New American Caravan, 1929, p. 138.
“I call it deadly determination”: Interview with Jack Mitchell.
“Son, is that the best you can do”: (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer, 8/16/92.
“Well, son, do the best you can”: JM journal note, undated.
CHAPTER 4: DISTRICT MAN
“New York in the thirties”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“A great many New Yorkers”: JM interview with NS.
“Half the soda jerks”: (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer, 8/16/92.
“He did not actually say so”: JM journal note, undated.
“one of the most exciting periods of my life”: JM to Thomas Waring, 6/4/81.
“We used to sit in the doorway”: JM, MEAB, p. 4.
“Everyone was watching the tall”: JM, MEAB, p. 142.
lived in a series of “furnished-room houses”: JM unfinished autobiography.
“I started walking, all day”: JM journal note, undated.
“Lost my shyness—would approach anyone”: Ibid.
“Well, I own a horse”: David Crowley to author, 8/18/05.
“She…had a benign view”: NMS family memoir.
“You made your bed”: Ibid.
Therese considered it “inevitable” that her talented husband would outshine her as a writer: Ibid.
“decided the story was too hot”: Richard Kluger, The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune, p. 250.
Mitchell nursed his grudge for months: The account of Mitchell’s tantrum in Ogden Reid’s office is drawn from various sources, including recollections of Stanley Walker, Joan Walker Iams, and Mitchell himself, in his journal notes.
“I got tired of hoofing after”: JM, MEAB, p. 7.
“This was no career for anyone”: Interview with Jack Sargent Harris.
“There were very few words in Joe”: Ibid.
“even the winch-drivers”: JM, MEAB, p. 7.
“It is south of Leningrad”: Ibid.
“the smell of sacrifice in the streets”: JM op-ed piece in New York Herald Tribune, 1931 (specific date uncertain).
“Looking back on it”: JM journal notes, undated.
CHAPTER 5: ASSIGNMENT: NEW YORK
“my oldest friend in New York”: JM journal note, undated.
“He ate too much just like Joe Liebling”: JM interview with Ben Yagoda, 1995.
Cantalupo “was so involved in the fish market”: Ibid.
he became a “fish market buff”: JM to E. Virgil Conway, 12/11/74.
“I got a feeling for New York speech”: (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer, 8/16/92.
“There would be a whole lot of wreaths”: JM interview with Nora Sayre.
“Get out of it”: JM, MEAB, p. 280.
“[A]nother visitor was Mickey Welch”: Ibid., p. 119.
“After painfully interviewing one of those gentlemen”: Ibid., p. 15.
“The best talk is artless”: Ibid., p 11.
“Persons whose names are in the Social Registers”: JM, “They Got Married in Elkton,” The New Yorker, 11/11/33.
“She decided to sing”: JM, “Home Girl,” The New Yorker, 3/3/34.
“The relatives were waiting”: JM, MEAB, p. 211.
“It takes ten beers to quench one’s thirst”: Ibid., p. 183.
“There was a peculiar journalistic world”: JM interview with Nora Sayre.
“compared with our competitors”: JM, MEAB, p. 20.
“The questioning of Mrs. Anne Morrow Lindbergh”: New York World-Telegram, 1/3/35.
“We used to go down there at night”: JM, MEAB, p. 21.
“In the morning all the ashtrays”: Ibid., p. 23.
“Be more debonair”: Thomas Kunkel, Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of The New Yorker, p. 260.
“When the Lindbergh trial is over”: St. Clair McKelway to JM, 1/9/35.
“Outside the leaves on the maples”: JM, MEAB, p. 173.
“It was a hell of a lot better to know”: Richard Gehman, “Jack Bleeck and The Formerly Club,” True magazine, January 1953.
“My memories of that period”: Ann Honeycutt interview with Nora Sayre.
called Honeycutt “a Molly Bloom figure”: The New York Times, 12/29/96.
Thurber “slapped me from across the table”: Burton Bernstein, Thurber: A Biography, p. 174.
“She was naked”: JM, “Mr. Grover A. Whalen and the Midway,” The New Yorker, 7/3/37.
“Frankly, we are a little puzzled by it”: St. Clair McKelway to JM, 11/30/36.
“The essential trouble with these stories”: Ibid., 10/1/37.
and he “began telling me how to look at the world”: JM interview with author.
“I began to see that I had written”: Ibid.
“Perhaps no other city in the world”: New York Herald Tribune, 1/23/38.
CHAPTER 6: A REPORTER AT LARGE
something “very unusual” for the editor: St. Clair McKelway to JM, 7/22/38.
“Look, Mitchell, if you’d like to come up here”: JM interview with author.
“This formality being over”: Harold Ross to JM, 9/8/38.
“Half the people here were always in debt”: JM interview with author.
“Mitchell, who has been working for us”: William Shawn to Harold Ross, August 1943.
Mitchell asserted that Maryland-style terrapin stew: The Mitchell–H. L. Mencken anecdote about terrapin stew comes from a series of exchanges among JM, Mencken, and St. Clair McKelway in 1939.
“For quite a while, the people I wrote about”: JM interview with NS.
Mazie “ran a movie theater”: JM interview with author.
“In My Ears Are Bent Mazie is indeed”: Noel Perrin, “Paragon of Reporters: Joseph Mitchell,” The Sewanee Review, Spring 1983.
“Sometimes a bum” and “Now and then, in the Venice”: JM in MEAB, p. 100, for the first; and JM in UITOH, p. 25, for the second.
Ross “had a view of those people”: JM interview with NS.
115 Mitchell “looked at freaks with love and affection”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“I urged Diane not to romanticize freaks”: Patricia Bosworth: Diane Arbus: A Biography, p. 177.
“The difference between Joe Mitchell’s portrait”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“Liebling had read a story I’d written”: JM interview with NS.
Borrow was “a forerunner of Joe’s and my interest”: Raymond Sokolov, Wayward Reporter: The Life of A. J. Liebling, p. 98.
Colonel Robert R. McCormick “daily assures Chicagoans”: A. J. Liebling, “Cassandra on Lake Michigan,” The New Yorker, 1/14/50.
“In the light of what Proust wrote”: A. J. Liebling, “Memoirs of a Feeder in France: A Good Appetite,” The New Yorker, 4/11/59.
it “liberated me to talk to Joe”: JM interview with NS.
“Pecker bone of a young”: Interview with Roger Angell.
Mitchell “understood the complicated importance”: Sokolov, Wayward Reporter, p. 232.
“The Joes often went to the Red Devil”: Brendan Gill at JM memorial tribute, 10/7/96.
“Therese Mitchell took photographs of them”: Sokolov, Wayward Reporter, p.
123.
Joe Gould “wasn’t just a bum”: Ross Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910–1960, p. 419.
take off in “awkward, headlong skips”: JM, “Professor Sea Gull,” UITOH, p. 64.
“I remember telling [my] editor”: JM, “Joe Gould’s Secret,” UITOH, p. 633.
“I understand you want to write something”: JM, Ibid., p. 635.
“Look,” he said. “You’re the one”: Ibid., p. 680.
CHAPTER 7: THERE ARE NO LITTLE PEOPLE
“They lived in this cramped little apartment”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“Look at the bosom”: Interview with NMS.
“the purpose of this interview”: This and subsequent particulars are from the report of the Civil Service Commission interview.
“For years he has been studying”: Time, 8/2/43.
“He is a remarkably competent, careful”: New York Herald Tribune, 8/1/43.
“Mitchell’s collection of portraits”: Cowley, “The Grammar of Facts.”
CHAPTER 8: MR. MITCHELL AND MR. FLOOD
“Tell the mayor of the fish market”: M. Lincoln Schuster to JM, 11/24/44.
“Thank you ever so much for your telegram”: JM to M. Lincoln Schuster, 11/27/44.
“I had been trying to write this thing”: JM interview with NS.
“Insofar as the principal character is concerned”: JM to Milton Greenstein, 9/28/61.
“ten or twelve people have spoken of”: Harold Ross to JM, 11/28/44.
“People, throngs of people, went down there”: JM interview with NS.
“When I first read [‘Old Mr. Flood’], I took it”: Interview with Philip Hamburger.
“Joe has been working hard at being an old man”: Brendan Gill, Here at The New Yorker, p. 318.
“On his ambivalence about strong drink”: JM, “Mr. Flood’s Party,” UITOH, p. 428.
“On pretentiousness”: JM, “The Black Clams,” UITOH, p. 408.
“On ‘new and improved’ foods”: JM, Ibid., p. 397.