SOURCE: "His Ears Are Bent on Hearing Talk of Town," in The Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), Vol. CCXX, No. 33, August 14, 1992, p. A8.

In the following essay, Trachtenberg briefly describes the contents of the four books included in Up in the Old Hotel.

As media circles buzz over the naming of high-voltage Tina Brown to the top post at The New Yorker, Pantheon has released a collection of the best works of Joseph Mitchell, a New Yorker persona of a far more diffident stripe.

So shy was he that the author's photo for Mr. Mitchell's first book, My Ears Are Bent (1938), showed him seated on a couch, a newspaper covering his face. Eventually, he fairly disappeared altogether: He kept an office at The New Yorker but didn't publish another signed article these past 27 years.

Thanks to this new collection of his work, Mr. Mitchell, now 84 years old, is...