SOURCE: "All Around This Area with J. Mitchell," in New York Herald Tribune Book Review, Vol. 36, No. 40, May 8, 1960, p. 4.

In the following review of The Bottom of the Harbor, Epstein considers the influence of Mitchell's prose style on his profiles of his subjects.

Half a dozen stories which appeared in The New Yorker from 1944 to 1959 make up the latest volume [The Bottom of the Harbor] designed to give a longer lease of life than guaranteed by ephemeral magazine covers to some of its articles. Few of them have been worthier than Joseph Mitchell's of preservation.

The author of McSorley's Wonderful Saloon has poked around in out of the way corners in the city and its environs to dig up pursuits and the people who follow them that few New York inhabitants ever knew existed. In this collection Mr. Mitchell is interested in some traditional and still surviving activities...