Harbour humour
From Mr Simon Roberts Sir: Allow me to dredge up Joseph Mitchell from 'the bottom of the harbor' whither a somewhat tight-lipped Mary Wakefield seems to have dispatched him (Books, 29 July).
I first came upon Mitchell some 40 years ago when a merry physician friend sent me a Penguin copy of McSorley's Wonderful Saloon. In 1964, on my first visit to New York, I made a pilgrimage to that droll shrine in the Bowery.
After Up in the Old Hotel (the collection of Mitchell's deadpan stories) had come out, I read a review in Time (September 1992) by Stephen Kanfer. I procured a copy immediately. Kanfer had called it 'the shortest 718-page volume of the year'. Ear- lier Brendan Gill in Here at the New Yorker (Random House, 1975) had written, 'In the opinion of many. . . the finest writer on the New Yorker is Joseph Mitchell.'
To have been a front-runner in the com- pany of E.B. White, Thurber, Kaufman, Perelman and countless others from the sta- ble of the improbable Harold W. Ross is a
LETTERS
memorable achievement, even if the grave- yard humour of some of Mitchell's charac- ters is not to everyone's multigrade taste.
With diffidence, 1 suggest that your reviewer join Mr Hewitt and Mr Townsend from towards the end of the book for a notional beer where they can discuss 'the purpose of life'.
Simon Roberts
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
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