McSorley's Wonderful Saloon

I wanted to find a copy of a collection of short stories from the New Yorker about New York. It's an older book, but it's not out of print. Nevertheless, I couldn't find it at any of the bookstores I tried while I was in New York.

Instead, a kindly bookseller directed me to this book. It turned out to be exactly the type of book I was seeking. It's a collection of pieces that Joseph Mitchell wrote about odd New Yorkers he ran across in his work as a journalist during the thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties. It is actually a book within a book, in a recently published collection of out-of-print books by Mitchell, titled Up in the Old Hotel.

I was fascinated by a little story that I discovered about Mitchell that I ran across while researching his life further. Mitchell interviewed a down-and-out fellow back in the thirties who claimed to be writing an enormous book, compiled in many volumes, about New York that consisted solely of conversations the fellow had had with people he met. A number of literary figures befriended this fellow over the years. Many years later, in the sixties, after the fellow passed away, Mitchell searched for the volumes of the book and he was dismayed to discover that the book was a figment of the fellow's mind, that nothing had ever been written. After writing this piece, Mitchell never wrote another word for publication, though he went into work every day for many years.

I read the first three articles:
- The Old House at Home
- Mazie
- Hit on the Head with a Cow

My takeaway is that McSorley's, which is the focus of the first article seems like an interesting place to visit the next time I'm in New York. A quick search on YouTube suggests that the place still exists and open for business.

The writing itself is characteristics of a New Yorker article. It reads tightly, about the people of New York from the time it was written. Ordinary people, local weirdos. Barkeepers, their customs, movie theater workers, homeless folks. No one a biographer would devote years of their lives for.

But I don't deeply care about them, I don't live in New York and surely they're all dead now. The world in the 1930s is very different with the present day, nearly a century later. (The structure of the world could feel the same, but the trappings today are entirely modern.) So I wonder, why am I reading this book? (Also, as the foreword noted, some people who knew the people profiled here thought that these were inaccurate characterization of these individuals, and they were entitled to their opinions.)

Anyway this made me think about Humans of New York (on Instagram? Facebook?) and how HoNY feels very much like a direct kin of this book.