Discovering Joseph Mitchell:
A Robesonian at The New Yorker
By Scott Bigelow
Eight years ago, when Joseph Mitchell resurfaced on the literary scene, it was like learning that a lost continent had been discovered. One of most respected non-fiction writers of the 20th century, this native Robesonian’s work is experiencing another revival this year.
What should we know about Joseph Mitchell, the writer who grew up near Fairmont and gained his fame at the New Yorker?For those interested, Mitchell is not easily accessible, and he left many important questions about his life unanswered.
Dr. Shelby Stephenson, editor of Pembroke Magazine, said of the retiring Mitchell: “He wrote me the nicest letter declining our invitation to attend his installation into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.”It was typical of Mitchell to disappoint his admirers.
Ray Rundus, a Mitchell scholar and retired UNC Pembroke English professor, once sought Mitchell’s help in writing a biography. He declined that invitation also.
By 1992, Mitchell had not published a word in almost 30 years. “Up in the Old Hotel” turned out to be a collection of his older work.
For reasons unknown to his closest friends, his literary voice went silent, without explanation.
Four years after his death in 1996 at age 88, Joseph Mitchell is news again, this time sparked by a movie version of one of his six books. “Joe Gould’s Secret” is playing on movie screens far from Robeson County, but the media have seized it as another opportunity to tell his story.
While living, the enigmatic Mitchell would never have allowed the movie to be made. It is hard enough to borrow a copy of one of his books, unless you know where to look.
“Betty Mitchell, a distant relative who lives in Fairmont, loaned me a copy of, I believe it was, “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon,” Rundus said. “Billy Whitted, owner of The Book Trader in Fairmont, gave me a copy of The Sewanee Review, which featured Mitchell.”
IN SEARCH OF MITCHELL
UNC Pembroke’s Sampson-Livermore Library has one copy of “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon,” and one copy of “Up in The Old Hotel” in a special collection.
A librarian said “McSorley’s” had never been checked out. An inspection of the inside the cover revealed the library purchased it for $1.
On the other hand, the Robeson County Public Library has a complete collection of Mitchell’s novels including his first, “My Ears are Bent.” (1938)“Books written in the 1930s and 1940s usually do not remain in our collection,” said Bob Fisher, director the library. “Because of his national reputation and because he is from Robeson County, it is our role to keep his work.”
Amazon.com, the on-line bookseller, stocks just two of Mitchell’s books, including “Joe Gould’s Secret.”
A quick search of the Internet turned up an obituary and several useful articles. One cites Pembroke Magazine 26 (1992) as a source of information.
Dedicated to Mitchell, that edition of the literary journal offers an excellent discussion of his life and work. To the disappointment of its editors, he did not contribute to the publication.
Surprisingly, Mitchell journeyed to UNCP in 1992, about the time that “Up in The Old Hotel” was published.
Rundus, who edited the special section and wrote an article for it, said Mitchell “was a wonderful guest” and “a very generous man in many ways.” He gave the scholar a package of documents.
“I brought him to campus, but it was not easy,” Rundus said. “He wanted no attention.”
A SON OF FAIRMONT
The son of a Fairmont cotton buyer, he attended The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but failed to graduate. Mitchell went to New York to become a newspaper reporter for the Morning World and later the Herald Tribune and World-Telegram.
That was 1933, the heart of the Depression. Some of Mitchell’s earliest feature stories were about losers in this war on prosperity.
By all accounts, he was not a pushy New York-style reporter, and this trait may explain why New Yorkers remain so fond of him. He also displayed a genuine respect for his down-and-out subjects, another attitude New Yorkers are not famous for.Mitchell wrote in the author’s note in “McSorley’s,” there are no “little people” in his stories. “They are as big as you are, whoever you are.”
He regularly chronicled the lives of New York street characters like the psychotic Joe Gould. Although he handled more glamorous news assignments (notably the trial of Bruno Hauptmann), it was these features that were his best work.
In 1938, Mitchell migrated to the New Yorker magazine, which was building a stable of extraordinary writers and a reputation for being the top dog in the world’s most discriminating intellectual marketplace.
Some said he was the best of the best. Calvin Trillin said he was “The New Yorker reporter who set the standard.” (http://www.ncwriter.org/jmitchel.htm)
Rundus said Mitchell remains an “icon among New York writers.” Out of respect, he was allowed to keep an office at the New Yorker for several decades after he stopped contributing to it.
WHAT WAS HE DOING?
“I visited him at his office, and he showed me the letter that (publisher) Tina Brown gave him saying he could keep the office as long as he liked,” Rundus said. “He did work. You could hear the typewriter and rustling around in there.”
There were various stories about what he was doing - that he was writing a book about the Fulton Fish Market, or about the Fairmont Tobacco Market, or other rumored topics, Rundus said.
What made Mitchell so readable is a clear and polished writing style.
He was a meticulous researcher with an eye for details and an ear for a good story. From public photographs – always wearing a felt hat and often in front of McSorley’s Saloon – he appeared to be a man who listened more than he talked.
“He is a listener of genius,” said William Grimes in the New York Times, July 22, 1992 (Pembroke Magazine 26, p. 44).
The title of his first book, “My Ears are Bent,” is undoubtedly the author’s reference to his joy in listening.Some scholars credit a small-town, front-porch upbringing for Mitchell’s appreciation of a good story. They may be right.
A pair of elderly aunts, who loved to tell “horrifyingly funny” family stories and take the young Mitchell to graveyards, were an influence, he said (N&0).
As a storyteller, Mitchell’s presence is nearly invisible. He lays a story out on the table, unvarnished and closely detailed.
Here is a writing sample drawn from his description of John McSorley, owner of the saloon of the same name:
“From the time he was twenty until he was fifty-five, Old John drank steadily, but throughout the last thirty-two years of his life he did not take a drop, saying, ‘I’ve had my share ..’ Old John maintained a man never lived who needed a stronger drink than a mug of stock ale .. He was a big eater. Customarily, just before locking up for the night, he would grill himself a three-pound T-bone, placing it on a coal shovel and holding it over a bed of oak coals in the back-room fireplace. He had an extaordinary appetite for onions, the stronger the better, and said that ‘Good ale, raw onions, and no ladies’ was the motto of his saloon.” (“McSorley’s” pages 5-6)CONNECTED TO ROBESON
Mitchell knew every corner of the Bowery and could recite the name of every cheap “pig snout” restaurant and flophouse. This was his land.
He loved the Robeson County landscape too and spent a great deal of time on the family farm near Ashpole Swamp. He said a high point of his life was an hour he spent watching a pileated woodpecker tear the bark off a rotting black gum tree.
Mitchell never published a word about woodpeckers or the other birds he enjoyed watching in the swamps of Robeson County. He wrote several short stories on Southern topics, but these are not outstanding, according to Rundus.
He did not often stray from his area of expertise, located in the streets and waterfront neighborhoods of lower Manhattan.
Rundus asserts Mitchell never left Robeson County. He “remains a part-time resident of Robeson County, and reads The Robesonian as avidly as the New York Times.” (p. 39)
Mitchell did not feel completely at home in New York or Robeson County.“I always felt like an exile,” he once told journalism professor Norman Simms. (Pembroke Magazine 26, p.32) This and other references to Mitchell’s lack of comfort in the modern world lead inevitably to the conclusion that Joe Gould, the homeless, Harvard-educated madman, and Mitchell are one in the same.
Gould’s “secret,” like Mitchell’s mystery, is "the great American novel" that neither man wrote.
While there may be some truth in this comparison, all Mitchell’s subjects (even Olga the Bearded Lady who periodically objected to being on display at freak shows) speak for the writer. Such is the nature of this form of writing, known as “literary journalism.”
Perhaps there were too-high expectations for a popular, young talent. Or, like old John McSorley’s 32 years of sobriety after a lifetime of drinking, Mitchell had had enough.
He never offered an answer, and he never outwardly indicated that his inability to write was a torment to him. His ears came unbent.
Mitchell’s only known national appearances were interviews with National Public Radio and Charlie Rose on PBS. His only known public appearance in Robeson County was at UNC Pembroke in 1992. On page 48 of Pembroke Magazine 26 is a photograph of him with the late Adolph Dial, Rundus, Shelby Stephenson and Chancellor Joseph Oxendine.
That’s about all that is left for his fans and inquisitive scholars.Joseph Mitchell, Robeson County’s contribution to the New Yorker, is resting at home in the family graveyard. His secrets are with him.
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from left: Adolph Dial, Rundus, Mitchell, Stephenson and Joe Oxendine
