SOURCE: "Heard on the Street," in The New Republic, Vol. 207, No. 15, October 5, 1992, pp. 43-6.

In the following essay, Sante describes the distinguishing features of Mitchell's stories and sketches, commenting on his characters, themes, and prose style. Sante also compares Mitchell's career to that of A. J. Liebling, his closest colleague at the New Yorker, and discusses the author's relationship with Joe Gould.

The title of this omnibus edition of Joseph Mitchell's books (four out of five of them) [Up in the Old Hotel] was an apt choice: it is both mysterious and deceptively cozy, and the 1952 piece from which it derives epitomizes a great deal about Mitchell's work. It opens with a sentence that is, again, ominous and deceptively reassuring: "Every now and then, seeking to rid my mind of thoughts of death and doom, I get up early and go down to Fulton Fish Market." Mitchell briefly...