SOURCE: "The Grammar of Facts," in The New Republic, Vol. 109, No. 4, July 26, 1943, pp. 113-14.

In the following review of McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Cowley comments on Mitchell's style, which he considers factual and repertorial.

In his own somewhat narrow field, which is that of depicting curious characters, Joseph Mitchell is the best reporter in the country. Some of his favorite subjects are Bowery angels, barflies, small-time Broadway sports, coffee-pot poets and Calypso singers. He writes about them with more sympathy and factual precision than you will find in the recent biographies of any famous authors or statesmen. In his new book, McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, there is not a trace of condescension. He says in an author's note, after explaining that these portraits were first written for The New Yorker, "The people in a number of the stories are of the kind that many writers have recently got into the...