My Ears Are Bent

by Joseph Mitchell, Dan Frank (Foreword by), Sheila McGrath (Foreword by)

As a young newspaper reporter in 1930s New York, Joseph Mitchell interviewed fan dancers, street evangelists, voodoo conjurers, not to mention a lady boxer who also happened to be a countess. Mitchell haunted parts of the city now vanished: the fish market, burlesque houses, tenement neighborhoods, and storefront churches. Whether he wrote about a singing first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers or a nudist who does a reverse striptease, Mitchell brilliantly illuminated the humanity in the oddest New Yorkers.

These pieces, written primarily for The World-Telegram and The Herald Tribune, highlight his abundant gifts of empathy and observation, and give us the full-bodied picture of the famed New Yorker writer Mitchell would become.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, New York, Journalism, Short Stories, History, Research

299 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Joseph Mitchell was an American writer who wrote for The New Yorker. He is known for his carefully written portraits of eccentrics and people on the fringes of society, especially in and around New York City.
-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an alternate universe, Joseph Mitchell did not die in 1996. He still lives. After reading this book -- a collection of his early newspaper essays and profiles from the 1930s, mostly about common New Yorkers -- enraptured from cover to cover, I finish and close it in awe, and decide to make a pilgrimage to New York City and stalk him at the offices of The New Yorker... but to do what? Hug him awkwardly? Praise him with insufficient words, also awkwardly? And what after that? A new piece from him entitled something on the order of: "Fawning weirdos who come to the Big Apple to genuflect"?

Interestingly, Mitchell captured this very phenomenon beautifully in a series of profiles he wrote about George Bernard Shaw's visits to New York City in the 1930s, in which the curmudgeonly elderly playwright was certain the curious masses come to greet him were interested merely in the aura of fame, rather than his work. As Mitchell quotes him: "I am interested in this abstract longing, your sense of admiration, and only wish that it could be turned into a direction that were sensible. Perhaps I should say that you people are filled with unemployed emotions."

I am a latecomer to Mitchell, admittedly, only becoming aware of him via Stanley Tucci's portrayal of him in early 1940s New York in the 2000 movie, Joe Gould's Secret, the story of the reporter/essayist's encounters with an impoverished, flamboyant Greenwich Village Bohemian, Gould, who, when not rubbing elbows with the better-heeled, claimed to have been writing an ultimate history of the world. Gould -- a commoner with delusions of grandeur -- was the kind of New York character who fascinated Mitchell.

The Gould stories came after the stories in this collection, My Ears Are Bent, but the characters herein are just as flavorful, or, if not so much, Mitchell knows how and where to apply just the right amount of salt and pepper to make them so.

...Ears... actually was first first published in 1938 and only recently brought back into print. It chronicles Mitchell's initial years as a cub reporter in the city from 1929 to 1938 in which he quickly became a seasoned veteran, plunging into the maelstrom of what was then the biggest and liveliest city on the planet. After writing these rough-and-ready pieces, Mitchell wrote steadily for The New Yorker (ostensibly more sophisticated works) from 1938 until 1964 (the time of his last Joe Gould piece), and then remained on the payroll as a reclusive, shadowy emeritus figure typing away at an abortive autobiography for 30 years. Between his depression, exhaustion and possibly more deep-rooted mental issues, Mitchell ironically became his own variation of Gould.

But the stories in this collection, from early in his career, find him vigorous, if already world weary, and the two photos reprinted here of him sprawled asleep on his couch tented under carelessly strewn Sunday papers capture of sense of his exhaustion. Mitchell put his all into a beat that pitted him against merciless deadlines and an even more formidable city.

What you learn very quickly from these pieces is that Mitchell had a love-hate relationship with the city, and a generous view of the real people, the little guys and gals, who made it tick, and a pointed disdain for the elite. The pieces are everything you've ever wanted from the pen of a New York newspaper reporter of the 1920s-1930s. The pieces are vivid, real, raw, funny and poignant, without excessive cynicism. The introductory chapter, in which Mitchell summarizes his decade of experience is a magical thing of beauty.

It dovetails nicely into one of the most hilarious chapters in the book: A portrait of a chaotic dive bar near the Brooklyn Bridge that would not be out of place in a Marx Brothers movie, where the "cop's bottle," reserved for enjoyment of New York's Finest, was actually an accumulation of the dregs and swill of other patrons' unfinished drinks.

Along the way, Mitchell introduces us to early strippers, oyster fishermen, entertainers, musicians, sports stars, preachers, Harlem cops, drug users, voodoo practitioners, con men, erstwhile poets, a pickpocket, an Italian grandmother, a cantankerous blind Jewish tailor, and many more. The chapter on an ASCAP Investigator, a clandenstine rep for the song publishers sent to make sure cabarets playing music are licensed so royalties can go to the artists, is a hilarious mixture of espionage and clashing cultures. The portraits of early striptease artists are sympathetic enough to overcome Mitchell's slight bemusement and muted condescension. His portrait of the aging showman, George M. Cohan, seems oddly lacking, yet captures the wistfulness and poignancy of an old man who can't let go of the past, and seems perfectly content to remain there in his mind.

Mitchell's admiration for working class New Yorkers of that period mirrors my own. These were people who knew which side their bread was buttered on; they had a healthy skepticism of war (particularly in the beautiful piece about the struggles of gassed Wrold War I veterans who had been conveniently kept out of the public sight), and of the ill intentions of the elite. It was a time when bankers actually went to jail. Mitchell clearly sees the point made by a pickpocket: "Hell, I'm not the only one that steals the poor man's pay. There are plenty of bank presidents no better than I am."

The pieces in this collection combine the lightning sketch-like dispatch of humorist George Ade, the affection of a Damon Runyon, the prose cleanliness of Hemingway and the biting wit and irony of a less cynical version of Ben Hecht. That these portraits are less leisurely or artful than Mitchell's later New Yorker writings doesn't faze me. This is staccato, flavorful stuff; vivid and razor sharp glimpses into the portal of a time machine into a lost world.

One is always aware of Mitchell's struggle to keep his sanity in this chaotic world; to love his fellow man in spite of all the horrors he sees in the big city. To find a bittersweet poetry in it all. He's a man who loves prostitutes more than politicians; one has honor and the other doesn't. He values unadorned speech and sentiment and finds it superior to artifice and the obfuscatory tactics of the wealthy, businessmen and politicians. Mitchell concludes that people who should be the most interesting, aren't... and vice versa.

His observations about the sensational aspects of the press -- entertainment over substance -- still resonate in our era of Kardashians. And his feeling of disgust for the world is palpable, and moving in his coverage of the mania surrounding the 1936 trial and execution of alleged Lindbergh baby kidnapper, Bruno Hauptmann.

In all of this, New York City is itself a character. Mitchell captures it in bitter cold and sweltering heat. One of my favorite sections in the book involves the city on a scorching day: "It takes ten beers to quench one's thirst. The damp, insistent heat has placed blue lines beneath the eyes of subway passengers. The flags on the skyscrapers are slack; there is no breeze." And then there's this description of the murmurs on the beach at Coney Island: "All of a sudden you realize that most of these humans are talking. The sound is like the sound in a theater just before the curtain goes up. Shut your eyes and listen. It is almost overpowering."

In Mitchell's day, reporters were like the gumshoes in detective novels, venturing boldly into every crevice of the town and taking risks. When Mitchell covered Harlem, he actually lived there in a cheap flat, to be near the action. The idea of press conferences and pooled or vetted reporting like we have today would have been ridiculed rightly by the men's-men journalists of that time.

Mitchell's coverage of raucous Harlem rent parties or his collage of residents as they anticipate the chance at racial justice in the boxing ring when Joe Louis fought Max Baer in 1935 provide vivid insights into black American life at the time.

While one finds familiarity in the America of the 1930s, one also finds remoteness, and Mitchell's time machine makes us feel like an interloper, walking about this lost world on slightly wobbly knees. In this, Mitchell is like us. He always maintained the approach of a pure observer; never quite a part of what he chronicled. And that is to his credit.

Pre-war New York was probably one of the few places in the United States at the time where you could easily find pizza, and even there it was not common American fare. In Mitchell's portrait of the entertainer, Jimmy Durante, (an inclusion that makes me love this book all the more) he describes Durante's love of pizza, a food so unknown at the time, apparently, that the author explains it thusly: "a pizza, or rubber-pie, the big cheese and tomato pies you see in the windows of Italian restaurants."

And there's even a long chapter on oyster harvesting on Long Island Sound. Boring? Nope. Awesome.

If you have even the slightest interest in American history, New York City, the 1930s, or just whipcrack reportage, this book is an absolute must. I adored it beyond expression.

(KR@KY 2017)

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wrestling managers, Harlem rent parties, fairground strippers, voodoo talisman manufacturers, oyster farmers, beating the heat on the Lower East Side, winter nights in women's shelters, and lots more. Joseph Mitchell's newspaper pieces from the 1930s about NYC comprise one of the great books about the city -- not as literary as his better known work for The New Yorker, but more fun.

[Michael Boyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some people make the difference between fiction and reportage irrelevant. There are some famous examples: Kerouac, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S Thompson and Jospeh Mitchell. I only recently discovered Jospeh Mitchell. I’m both disappointed to be late and elated to be there in his prose at all. I first read him in the New Yorker, which is fitting since he worked there from 1938 until 1996 (a few months before he died). They published a previously unpublished excerpt from an unfinished memoir he started in the 1960s. He apparently started and stopped writing this memoir many times. In fact, he stopped writing altogether after 1964, but stayed an employee of the New Yorker pretty much up until he died. I wonder what he did for 30 years. I suppose he edited and played the part of muse. Actually, he still wrote, he just never finished anything, which for Jospeh Mitchell is saying something because he used to sometimes write 3 features a day for the Herald Tribune and New York World-Telegram back in the 1930s. You could say that his writing had the “gift of the gab” - a phrase people used to apply particularly to a certain sort of (usually Irish) person able to entrance a listener with an oration of questionable facticity; facts being of course completely beside the point. The point actually being its charm and ability to convey something ineffably beautiful (sometimes terrible) and true regardless of factual accuracy. I’m not saying Jospeh Mitchell’s pieces aren’t factual, but I am saying that it doesn’t matter because they read like fiction, meaning they convey more, and leave you with the feeling of more, than a simple report or personal profile normally might do.

The piece I initially read, as I said, was an excerpt from a memoir, but again, it wasn’t the details of a life of a writer being laid bare (say, according to the reasonable elasticity of the convention) that was captivating. It wasn’t all, “in 1938 when I first joined the New Yorker.” He may well have attempted such a memoir, I don’t know, but the excerpt was not that. Rather, it was him talking about walking around the city of New York. I love to walk, and walking features a fair bit in my own writing, as I have a lot of thinking and feeling about it as a pastime and a way of figuring things out and connecting to the world. Jospeh Mitchell’s walking is the walking of an observer, and it fits very much into the writing about people that he famously did so much of in the newspaper (what they used to call “human interest stories”) and developed so well as an art in the New Yorker magazine. When I say he talks about walking, you have to understand that the man walked great distances on a regular basis all through the many boroughs of New York City. It wasn’t just a question of walking through neighbourhoods of Manhattan. He walked everywhere. The details he conveyed while telling his story of himself walking, of what he saw, of the buildings and people he checked up on in a regular way, and the way the writing made it evident in an indirect way how it all registered on him, registered on me as a profound disclosure of the art of writing itself. I felt a kindred spirit, but I also felt a connection to a world from an era I love to explore, be it through writing or music or film or photography, painting, etc. So, I had to read more.

There were a few collections of his pieces published and I’ve started reading through the republished and collected editions. The first was My Ears Are Bent, which collects his work for the New York World-Telegram and New York-Herald Tribune and from 1931 to 1938, when he left to work for the New Yorker. The second, Up In The Old Hotel, is a compilation of 4 previously published books of collected articles (including the one originally titled the same), now long out of print. This collection was published in 1992, which he wrote an introduction to, 4 years before he died. It includes a couple of previously uncollected pieces and some fiction as well. I’m still reading this collection at the time that I’m writing this, but I’ve finished My Ears Are Bent, so I thought I would say a few words about this lovely book.

There are pieces on and interviews with some famous people here, which I found interesting and revealing in a way akin to finding an old candid photograph of someone you only saw "posed" pictures of previously. These include George Bernard Shaw, Gene Krupa, George M. Cohen, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joe Louis, and Jimmy Durante. But the best pieces for myself were of people who were not celebrities but who were so wonderfully peculiar to the time and so seemingly foreign or invisible to our current time. The pieces are vivid personality profiles, all at once wry, ironic and yet affectionate, not mean, rather, celebratory in their perspective. There’s a stance in them that reminds me of the way certain characters in old movies use to posture -a kind of cheerful melancholy, a drawn figure who is beat yet also vigorous, emphatic, ironic yet kind.

I highly recommend this to people who love the American 30s culture as represented in writing, music, radio and film.

[Hannah]

you know how every NYRB short story collection is by "one of the twentieth century's most accomplished writers working at the height of his powers"? ever wondered where to find one of the twentieth century's most accomplished writers working at the middleth of his powers? look no further. bonus points for more Harlem stuff because I have a sense of civic pride

[Carol Tilley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful.

[William Korn · Rating 5 out of 5]

My good friend Jim Paris recommended Joseph Mitchell to me because he was a precursor to John McPhee as a great feature writer for the New Yorker magazine, and so he is. But although Mitchell and McPhee are both highly accomplished in their craft, they are very different in the subjects about which they write. McPhee writes (mainly) about unusual but "civilized" people of great accomplishment. Mitchell, in this 1930's collection of feature stories for New York City tabloids, writes (mainly) about just plain folks, with a generous helping of freaks, fools, scoundrels, and hobo angels thrown in for good measure.

Mitchell's writing style is reminiscent of McPhee, but also of Raymond Chandler -- narrative that is wonderfully put together but tuning in to the language of the subjects he encounters in the rougher areas of New York City long before they were gentrified and Disneyfied.

Thank you, Jim Paris, for loaning me this book. It's a wonderful read!

[Boris · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was a time when reporters were actually reporters who actually had to mix with the real people, unlike now where J-school graduates have barely concealed contempt for the 'hoi polloi' and are intent on changing the world instead of simply reporting the news.

Joseph Mitchell has produced a collection of the accounts of the interesting and very offbeat people he encountered and interviewed as a beat reporter in the 1930's in New York City. Mitchell truly likes the offbeat and eccentrics he meets and doesn't have the disdain for the common people like modern reporters.

His chapter on "Cheesecake" indicates that some things are timeless.

[pickfordm]

I read this as research into the decades of twentieth century America. Mitchell has an engaging voice and the ability to capture someone's character, as well as a sense of the atmosphere. I haven't read much of his later and more in-depth essays, and look forward to those. For me, an added plus was the description of Huey P. Long, a legend in my home state, Louisiana.

[Ted · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of stories puts me in mind of watching old newsreels or an old black-and-white “B” movie, the one where you refer to people you’re not kindly toward as "bums” and finish your sentences with “see?” Think James Cagney. These aren’t stories written in today’s language ABOUT the 1930s but are stories written IN the 1930s.

I thought I would enjoy the step back in time, but I was wrong. The two stars are less about poor writing or poor stories and are instead descriptive of my level of appreciation.

[Will Hines · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much fun! Assuming your idea of fun is newspaper features from the 1930s by a NYC journalists who specialized in talking to drunks, strippers, athletes, the homeless, con artists and George Bernard Shaw. Which is indeed my idea of fun. The writing is tight, lousy with nouns and terrific quotes from unaffected subjects. Made me nostalgic for a time I do not know. Also funny!

[Raphael Desreumaux · Rating 4 out of 5]

The style or writing is phenomenal. I can see why his writing is still taught to budding journalists. What a wild place New York was in the 30s.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I regularly dive into the Life Magazine archives from the 1930s and 40s, so I was excited about this book. Joseph Mitchell, then a young journalist, walked Depression-era New York City in search of unusual subjects and pestered his sources for leads. He spoke to all sorts of New Yorkers: Strippers from New Jersey, sellers of various exotic materials, cartoonists, celebrities, and a struggling wedding rabbi. Reading this made me want to go back to New York circa 1936 and walk around the west side, peeking into the burlesque houses and storefronts that housed ostrich feather fan purveyors and voodoo mail-order joints.

Mitchell had a good feel for what his readers wanted. He tells stories in a circuitous way that is oddly satisfying. For the most part, he doesn't get too cynical.

In his articles about the burlesque clubs, Mitchell gives us a good look at the industry, including the cat-and-mouse game between the clubs and the anti-stripping reformers, whom he calls the “Women’s League against Everything.” He interviewers dancers who pitch various gimmicks; one of them wants to put her clothes back ON during the routine. He finds other interesting characters on the edges of the industry. One guy supplies the stripper’s elaborate ostrich fans, which are so crucial that when one breaks, he flies in to repair it. Then there’s the buttoned-up president of the World’s Fair Corporation who is changing the name of the fair’s carnival area in an attempt to shake off its reputation as a hotbed of sex work. Most of the people Mitchell talks to are chatty and articulate; they don’t get too upset when he occasionally pokes at their pretensions (”I'm stripping for art!”) during the interview.

Others apparently took him more work to draw out. His profile of Mazie, a street philanthropist and would-be nun who refuses to most of his questions, is probably my favorite. In another story, Mitchell interviews gravely wounded WW1 veterans in a VA hospital, asking them whether the US should become involved in a new European war if one should occur.  (At the time, Italy had just invaded Ethiopia, and many Americans were afraid of being drawn into another war.)

I get the feeling that Mitchell might have fudged some of the quotes, but that doesn't bother me much. Reading this left me hungry for more. As someone who is fascinated by wartime NYC, I would have loved to see this collection continue past 1939. Fortunately for Mitchell, who was probably exhausted by the tight deadlines, the New Yorker hired him in 1939. I’ll probably read his longer New Yorker profiles (including another one of Mazie) next.

[Jesse Easley · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you fear that the internet and social media are homogenizing culture to a dull mundane vain blob read this book and indulge in a time period of true melting pot variety in 1930’s New York.

My ears are bent are the stories and articles of one Joseph Mitchel a true newspaper reporter of the Big Apple. Collected here are some of his published but also some of his unpublished stories. He is one of those people that has the gift of being unnoticed to capture a scene and at the same time he is someone people are comfortable to confide with. He’s also the kind of person whom is comfortable eating Chicken Giblets after a gun has gone off in a room full of people.

His interest is in the everyday folks of the Big Apple, from Vaudeville Comedians, Strippers, Cartoonists, Oyster Farmers, Cops, and Bartenders. All these stories are real accounts of peoples lives as the Depression begins to settle in. It’s a breath of fresh air to listen to how different and varied people so crammed together can be. Each individual is like a grape being crushed in the great press of society to produce the most favorable wine. The nonchalance in how New Yorkers press on in the face of adversity is inspiring.

Then again if you are one that doesn’t fear that the internet and social media are homogenizing culture, then continue to take taxis driven by apps to the latest fine dining in a food truck your phone told you about and seek approval for self portraits from your peers vapid likes in hopes that you will do the same for them. You wouldn’t understand a time in which writers wrote with integrity and not to sell you with side banners regarding data from your past search engine inquiries. The reason you have nothing interesting to talk about is because you can’t tell a good story being a generation told every route to take.

[Monica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enjoyable vignettes from 1930s New York, some of the episodes such as those describing the bars and taverns, the clubs and the colourful characters that inhabit them from the proprietors to the burlesque dancers and the classes and the distinctions are more memorable than others which deal with characters from the world of sports or cartoon journalists who are long forgotten and very much of the time.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not great but a good early peek at the greatness to come later when Mitchell went to work for the NYer and became released from the deadlines of a beat reporter. Some of these pieces are entertaining, but they read like what they are -- newspaper stories -- and not the true literature of the NYer essays. Not sure I'd recommend this to anyone who hasn't read the mature Mitchell of Up in the Old Hotel.

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Joseph Mitchell ever since Noel Perrin's A Reader's Delight alerted me to The Bottom of the Harbor. Reading that collection led me to buy McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, and this one, and I've got Old Mr. Flood waiting its turn on my unread shelves. I have taught his work to undergraduates in American Literature, and used it to illustrate the use of simple language loaded with POV disguised as mere observation, in lectures to writers. I cannot over-recommend his work.

Those other collections are generally from essays he wrote while working at The New Yorker, but this is a collection of his newspaper work BEFORE he went to TNY. (I learned from this collection that he got tired of the whole thing, went to sea on a freighter that went to Leningrad in 1931, then came back and got married.)

These pieces are consistently amusing, and frequently immortal. His description of a triple execution is widely anthologized. We have a series of sketches of New Yorker cartoonists (Peter Arno, Helen Hokinson, William Steig), performers (George M. Cohan, Jimmy Durante, Gene Krupa in his 20s) and some evangelists (Billy Sunday, Father Divine). He features an ASCAP inspector, a lady boxer, and there's a delightful series of interviews of burlesque strippers and fan-dancers, some of them subsequently famous.

One of my favorites is the sardonic essay that makes something out of what is really nothing, "No Saturday Night Sin on the Night Line". The night boat to Albany was a joke line for comedians, and stood for sin and hedonism. So Mitchell takes the first trip of the season, on the aptly-named Trojan, and finds "The creaking old side-wheeler made a tranquil run, transporting forty-nine sedate beer-drinking passengers and a cargo of hides and wood pulp from Pier 52 in Manhattan, hard by the chicken and duck sheds of Gansevoort Market, to Steamboat Square in Albany. The Trojan has 229 staterooms and an excursion capacity of 2,000, and the forty-nine citizens who made the first trip had plenty of elbow room. Apparently it was too early in the season for Saturday night sin on the Hudson. At no time during the run were there more than seven persons sitting around the steamer's square bar, and John Quinn, the bartender, took his apron off at 11 P.M., drank a glass of Guinness for a nightcap and locked up his stock of bottles. The majority of the passengers were middle-aged and by midnight they were all in bed, and when the steamer tied up in Albany on Sunday at 6 A.M. there was not one hangover on board." He interviews the purser and the captain, and then finishes out:

"...A few went forward and stood beneath the pilot house, watching Captain Warner throw his searchlight on sand and gravel scows moving sleepily down the river. A few sat around the bar and drank beer and cream ale--of the forty-nine passengers only five drank whiskey.
It was obvious that they did not take the Night Line for a night of lechery. They took it for fresh air, or for a good night's sleep, or to get to Albany."


Some quotes:

"Mr. Shaw called the American Constitution "a charter of anarchy" in his speech last night.
'I meant just that,' he said today. 'It should be set aside. It is merely an accumulation of efforts on the part of the people to escape governing themselves.'

Do not get the idea, however, that I am outraged by ear-benders. The only people I do not care to listen to are society women, industrial leaders, distinguished authors, ministers, explorers, moving picture actors (except W.C. Fields and Stepin Fetchit), and any actress under the age of thirty-five. I believe the most interesting human beings, so far as talk is concerned, are anthropologists, farmers, prostitutes, psychiatrists, and an occasional bartender. The best talk is artless, the talk of people trying to reassure or comfort themselves, women in the sun, grouped around baby carriages, talking about their weeks in the hospital or the way meat has gone up, or men in saloons, talking to combat the loneliness everyone feels. The talk when you interview someone for a newspaper is usually premeditated and usually artificial."
...Next down the list are society women. I rank them with the jimson-weed and the vermiform appendix; I cannot see any reason for their existence. Also, they have bad manners."

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Especially enjoyed the descriptions of people and the stories about wrestling and cartoonists.

Notes:
Foreward, photo of him reading a newspaper, with foot on knee.
5....Walk Harlem at 3 am, discovering what the depression and prurience of white men were doing to a people who are last to be hired, first to be fired.
12...Aimee Semple McPherson
...they're always amusing, frustrated, spiteful old actresses on the down grade.
25...drunks ... saloons near newspapers
45...cheesecake ... 47 when papers run lots of stories about strippers the reformers throw catfits.
64...nudism ... Calif Pacific Intl Exposition ... S Diego 1936 ... 74... nudism is healthy
86... Rockland Palace 155th & 8th, boxing and wrestling
104... Jack Pfefer wrestling promoter ... King Kong , Gorilla Man,
107...I'm in show business like Ringling. The Show must go on. the public wants freaks, a good laugh
not like prize fighting, where best man wins ... Furtive air of the sideshow, the flea circus
109...Martin Levy 625 lbs
Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Feren Holuban, Kalmikoff
121... Billy Sunday, 1,200 souls vs 20,000 ... you have to take what you can get
219... Jimmy Durante... going on the water wagon
252... comic art Arno, Helen Hokinson (Silvermine, CT)
267...Wm Steig... 271: Laughter's not always noble. Often it's vicious. "Secret of Laughter" theory of superiority ...
Freud: release of psychic tension... we're inhibited, and a piece of humor breaks down the tensions
289... GB Shaw on the death of a famous actor: "I cannot sympathize about his death because I am going to die myself shortly."

[Marc T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended.

Really great. Mitchell's voice is so distinctive. A pioneer in the journalism business by writing about folks (or places, or events) off the beaten path for the most part (derelicts, the poor, the unusual). He made them human and showed how they were innately interesting. Sometimes tongue in a dry cheek, specific with facts, yet somehow informal in his writing. Like hearing one side of a conversation you're very involved with.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you haven't read anything by Mitchell, don't start with this. His New Yorker articles, collected as Up in the Old Hotel, are the reason he's known. If you read that and become obsessed, as many of us do, then go ahead and read My Ears Are Bent. It's not nearly as good, but some of the articles demonstrate the voice and humor he later became famous for.

[Emanuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5 stars. Man, what a ride this was haha such style and precision writing, I knew what I was in for from the first couple pages. While some stories weren't as entertaining as the others, each one was written so well. The stories at the end of Gene Krupa and George Bernard Shaw were the perfect cap to this great collection of stories.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of newspaper articles from the 1930’s had a few really interesting ones and then a couple that while they were definitely of the time, they were tough to read now. His perspective of NYC from many different walks of life, rich and poor, during this pivotal time was illuminating and revealing.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nuggets of interesting stories and names. Still though, it lacks a certain summation or narrative thread. Just a smattering of one offs and interviews, with little time to really ruminate. A snapshot in time to be sure, but I find myself wanting more depth than what was given.

[Candorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Articles written for The New Yorker and possibly others that chronicle an era of New York City in the mid-to-late 1930's, an era that dissipated into history kept in memory by Mitchell's deft and often humorous descriptions.

[Sevelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crisp, colorful, yet unvarnished and unadorned language. He was to 20th C New York what Pepys and Boswell were to London. Book contains a fascinating and detailed treatment of voodoo practice in Harlem. Read it if only to see how Americans used to speak

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Can anyone recommends a good follow-up book by Joseph Mithcell--are there any more great compilations like this one? Cheers:)

[Emma Davey]

New York's finest collector of Absolute Guys

[Andrew Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fun short snippets of various characters Joseph Mitchell met in ea;y 20th Century New York. Something for everyone - and a quick read!

[Austin Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

94/100

5 stars - 90/100
4 stars - 80/100
3 stars - 70/100
2 stars - 60/100
1 star - 50/100

[Lady ♥ Belleza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mitchell’s writing is straightforward and honest, but not plain or boring. This is a fascinating selection of articles. Besides interviews he gives us a look at the inside of the newspaper business in the early 30′s for instance:

“When I got out of the subway at Sheridan Square I would get a Herald Tribune to see what the rewrite man had done with the stories I had telephoned in hours earlier.”
“Crime, especially murder, was difficult to cover on The Herald Tribune because we were under orders to avoid the use of the word “blood” in a story. One of the owners did not like that word.”
On the subject of copyreaders:
“They will cut the word “belly” out of your copy and write in the nauseating word “tummy”. Pimp referred to as “a representative of the vice ring.” “raped” … always comes out “criminally attacked.”
“There is no fury which can equal the black fury which bubbles up in a reporter when he sees his name signed to a story which has been castrated by a copyreader or one of the officials on the city desk.”

I probably should not have tried to read this book all at once, I should have broken it up with other reading, as it is I will have to read a book a day to catch up, but I do not regret reading My Ears Are Bent, it was fascinating.

[Alicea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remember when I read The 40s which was a collection of articles from The New Yorker? Remember how I talked about how this book came into my life because I read an article on the NYPL website that James Spader was currently reading it? Well, from that spawned an untapped obsession with journalism. To get my fix, I turned to My Ears Are Bent by Joseph Mitchell who was a longtime writer for the esteemed literary institution mentioned above. However, this collection of articles is from his time before when he wrote for The World-Telegram and The Herald Tribune. It's split into categories with such titles as Sports Section (self-explanatory), Drunks (all about the culture of speakeasies and saloons), Cheese-Cake (not what you'd think and maybe my favorite section), Come to Jesus (religion in NYC), and more. This is the kind of book that makes you want to go out and grab history books of this time period (1930-40s) so you can give more context to the snippets that Mitchell gifts the reader. I made notes on a few key people (Sally Rand, William Steig, and Joe Louis to name a few) so that I could look at their pictures. If you enjoy nonfiction, history, and New York in the 1930s then this is the book for you. Now excuse me, I've got a scoop that I need to explore.