SOURCE: "Fish Every Day," in New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, Vol. 25, No. 10, October 24, 1948, p. 20.

In the following essay, Conrad judges Old Mr. Flood to be an accurate representation of a rapidly disappearing phase of Manhattan life.

As a reporter of the New York scene whose integrity equals his human insight and his admirable command of a disciplined prose that is never loosely journalistic or falsely literary, Joseph Mitchell informs his readers that this portrait of Mr. Flood [in Old Mr. Flood] is not one man but the composite of several venerable Fulton Fish. Market habitues. His purpose has been to make the stories "truthful rather than factual." Having become acquainted with Mr. Flood when he first appeared in the pages of The New Yorker we are reluctant to accept a multiple image. In his person and his philosophies, in his speech and in every detail of...