SOURCE: "Journeys with Joseph Mitchell," in The American Scholar, Winter, 1993, pp. 132-33, 136-38.

In the following essay, Zinsser assesses the enduring worth of each of the four books collected in Up in the Old Hotel, basing his judgments on both Mitchell's technique and subject matter.

Every now and then, seeking to rid my thoughts of death and doom, I get up early and go down to Fulton Street Fish Market. I usually arrive around five-thirty, and take a walk through the two huge open-fronted market sheds, the Old Market and the New Market, whose fronts rest on South Street and whose backs rest on piles in the East River. At that time, a little while before the trading begins, the stands in the sheds are heaped high and spilling over with forty to sixty kinds of finfish and shellfish from the East Coast, the West Coast, the Gulf...