Fucking hell! What a masterpiece. This was one of the last books I put on my list of books to read after Finals, recommended by Robert Crumb in the Guardian Review: "a wonderful collection of profiles from the New Yorker from 1937-64 by the great columnist Joseph Mitchell, which chronicle New York from the 1920s; it really puts you there". I got it for my birthday in 2010 and only started reading it last July and I've been puttering away at it a few pages a night. I also read two other books in between. But recently I've gathered more speed and started reading it over breakfast and lunch now that my decks are clear. It's a bit like an American (New York) Ulysses but non-fiction. Also a bit reminiscent of Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor in the way it paints a city through its people. Towards the end of the book, everything comes together in "Joe Gould's Secret", which, because I started the book so long ago, felt vaguely familiar. This is because Joe Gould is the "Professor Sea Gull" of one of the first profiles. But it's also because Joseph Mitchell is such a character, too: in the warmth he feels for New York's people and ways of life; his storytelling panache; his amazing memory and ability to weave together strands of knowledge. Who knew about the Native American high steel bridge-builders; about the shad fishermen of the New Jersey side of the Hudson River; the bums, the drunks, the conmen, the gypsies, the policemen; the Fulton Fish Market and all its many suppliers; the wrecks at the bottom of the river, and the oysters and clams? Joseph Fucking Mitchell did and he put it all in this book, which you should read haste post haste.
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