SOURCE: "Some Talk That Bent a Reporter's Ears," in The New York Times Book Review, January 23, 1938, p. 5.

In the following review of My Ears Are Bent, Van Gelder describes the types of people Mitchell most liked to interview.

Mr. Mitchell is a sort of Stephen Crane of this generation's newspaper city rooms, a somber athlete with an exceptional writing talent who finds Harlem and the lower East Side the most interesting localities in town. The book's title [My Ears Are Bent] is his comment on the listening he has been obliged by his trade of daily newspaper interviewer to go through. He has become a connoisseur of talk and holds that the best talk is artless, made up of the wandering comments of people trying to reassure or comfort themselves. He particularly fancies the intimate confidences of those who might roughly be classified as "screwballs." For instance, there...