Man in Profile

Starred review from February 9, 2015
Kunkel (Genius in Disguise) takes readers on a trip back in time, showing how great writers can both capture their own era and endure beyond it. Joseph Mitchell was a beat reporter in the early 1930s who landed at the New Yorker during its seminal years later in the decade, creating a style all his own. It wasn’t exactly reporting, but was a
precursor to ’60s-era New Journalism. This was the form of his legendary pieces—mostly nonfiction, with a little bit of poetic license thrown in to make it work—which included “King of the Gypsies” in 1942, “Mr. Hunter’s Grave” in 1956, and “Joe Gould’s Secret” in 1964. Deftly drawing a portrait of the man, Kunkel demonstrates how Mitchell, by birth a North Carolinian, felt a love for his adopted home of New York City that nurtured the deep vein of nostalgia running through his pieces. The author also takes pains to explain Mitchell’s famous nearly-30-year-long drought, when he still reported for work but didn’t publish a thing. For those in love with the New Yorker, this tale of a bygone period in the magazine’s history will be nirvana. For those interested in writers’ lives, it will be the start of a hunt for Mitchell’s own books. Agent: Peter Matson, Sterling Lord Literistic Inc.

February 1, 2015
The strange trajectory of one writer's career.Joseph Mitchell (1908-1996) joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1938, quickly earning praise for deft profiles of unusual figures: the bearded circus performer Lady Olga, for example, a gypsy king, and a Native American who worked high above the city on bridges and skyscrapers. The magazine's founder and editor, Harold Ross, called Mitchell "an exemplar of a Fact writer-a lovely and clean stylist, and someone who brought plenty of fresh characters to the magazine." In this illuminating biography, Kunkel (President/St. Norbert Coll.; Enormous Prayers: A Journey into the Priesthood, 1998, etc.), a former reporter and editor whose previous books include a life of Ross, portrays Mitchell as a driven perfectionist with a "near-obsession, cultivated over a decade pounding pavement for newspapers, with the city's 'lowlife, ' as that class was known around the editorial offices of the New Yorker." A hugely prolific writer in the 1940s, his output waned in the next decade and ended in 1965 after he wrote a long profile of the eccentric Joe Gould, a drunk and a derelict who boasted that he had written a multimillion-word Oral History of Our Time. Gould had a special attraction for Mitchell, who, by the 1960s, hoping to produce an autobiography, was finding it increasingly hard to write. As he told an interviewer, he found Gould so compelling "[b]ecause he is me." With the cooperation of Mitchell's family, friends and colleagues, and steeped in New Yorker lore and personalities, Kunkel examines Mitchell's devotion to his family, his recurring depressions and his relationship with Ross, his successor, William Shawn, and fellow writer A.J. Liebling. Everyone was mystified by the last three decades of Mitchell's life, when he arrived each day at the magazine, closeted himself in his office and produced absolutely nothing. Kunkel cannot solve the mystery, but he offers a finely delineated portrait of the man.

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February 1, 2015
From the 1930s to the early 1960s, Joseph Mitchell was renowned for the penetrating long-form profiles he wrote for the New Yorker. A southerner with an abiding love of New York and an ear for good stories, Mitchell listened to and chronicled the lives of celebrities, politicians, fishmongers, bartenders, construction workers, cops, and numbers runners. He started his career as a reporter for the Herald Tribune, learning the geography, rhythms, and sounds of the city, then rendering them to readers along with his own poignant eccentricities. A prolific writer and a perfectionist about words, detail, and mood, he started a memoir and other projects and got stuck somehow, never finishing a book for the next 30 years. Kunkel, acclaimed author of Genius in Disguise (1995), a biography of New Yorker founder Harold Ross, captures Mitchell's genius, his quiet but dogged writing process, and his triumphs and disappointments. Also included are passages from Mitchell's writings and a trove of photographs, including many taken by Mitchell's wife, Therese, a documentary photographer. An enlightening look at an influential writer and other luminaries of the New York writing scene.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2014

Joseph Mitchell wrote pioneering profiles for The New Yorker culminating in 1964's remarkable "Joe Gould's Secret," which he expanded into a book of the same name that appeared in 1965. Then, in one of the big mysteries on the American cultural scene, he stopped writing. Fifty years later, Kunkel, a former president of the American Journalism Review, is releasing a biography supported by the estate and based on Mitchell's massive archive.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2015

Renowned for having captivated audiences with his profiles of ordinary and often down-and-out people, Mitchell was considered to be one of The New Yorker's best reporters. Kunkel (president, St. Norbert Coll.; Genius in Disguise) paints a vivid portrait of the writer best known for his pioneering literary nonfiction. He details the life and career of Mitchell (1908-96), who set off from his family farm in North Carolina to fulfill his dream of being a writer. The author describes how Mitchell arrived in New York days before the start of the Great Depression; getting a job as a newspaper reporter through a combination of determination and luck and then finding success as a staffer on The New Yorker. Mitchell was intrigued by his adopted hometown and spent countless hours over a 30-year period meticulously chronicling the lives of some of the city's most colorful denizens. Why Mitchell suffered from a severe writer's block for the remainder of his career is a mystery that Kunkel explores by interviewing Mitchell's family members and colleagues and by scouring archival papers. VERDICT This engaging profile would be of interest to students of journalism and American studies, those who enjoy biographies of writers, and, of course, anyone who has read The New Yorker.--Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.