A WEEK IN BOOKS : Reading and Watching Joseph Mitchell

Ever since I bought a copy of the Vintage paperback of Up In The Old Hotel in the U.S. years ago I have been a devotee of the work of Joseph Mitchell. I have read all of his books and my current digital subscription to The New Yorker allows me to read everything he ever wrote for that magazine. I am also constantly trying to source as many articles I can on the great man to add to my slowly thickening file in between catching repeated snippets of Joe Gould's Secret on youtube (more in a moment). This week I have been reading an old Oxford American feature on him by Sam Stephenson - http://www.jazzloftproject.org/files/file/MITCHELL.pdf – which focuses on Mitchell's obsession with collecting seemingly mundane artifacts from the past – in New York but also in his home state of North Carolina – a pursuit that presumably filled up his time when he stopped publishing anything in The New Yorker after the mid-60s despite remaining on the magazine's staff for thirty years thereafter. There is also a visually stunning companion piece in Granta 88 by Paul Maliszewski which I recommend as well. But I suppose the exciting news for all Mitchell fans is the forthcoming biography Man In Profile : Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker by Thomas Kunkel to be published at the end of April by Random House. Kunkel is the author of an excellent biography of Harold Ross – founder of The New Yorker and Mitchell's first editor there - and has also edited a volume of Ross' entertaining correspondence. So expectations for the Mitchell book are very high. Is he able to throw any more light on the mystery of why The New Yorker never published anything by Mitchell after Joe Gould's Secret in 1964? Mitchell certainly didn't stop writing, and The New Yorker has in recent years been publishing tantalising extracts from an unfinished biogrpahy, so what was he thinking? I suspect that as the 60s wrought its seismic cultural changes and his old, more genteel New York started to disappear, Mitchell became a man out of time, more and more disillusioned with what was going on around him and unwilling or unable to summon the enthusiasm to document his vanshing world anymore. The astounding thing is that his legacy and influence are still so strong today. Joe Gould's Secret is probably his most famous work. It's a wonderful book and a masterclass for all budding biographers, but it's also a great film as well. Stanley Tucci (currently the star of the TV series Fortitude and an actor growing in prominence) gives a subtle and engaging performance as Joseph Mitchell as well as directing the film, and the great Ian Holm plays the hobo/con-artist/intellectual/chronichler-of-our-times Joe Gould brilliantly. Susan Sarandon and Hope Davis also appear. It's never been released here on DVD, which is a crime, and with Thomas Kunkel's book about to project Mitchell and his work back into the spotlight, now, it would seem, is the time.

The Fly Trap by Fredrik Sjöberg (Particular Books)

The astounding success of Helen Macdonald's H Is For Hawk has undoubtedly moved the literary spotlight onto an elusive genre of books that has so far managed to remain pleasingly unclassifiable but richly rewarding. They are supremely erudite books, but also clear-headed, thoughtful and sometimes brutally honest. They cover, in various combinations, travel writing, nature, literature, science, history and personal memoir and they have been written by some of my favourite authors. W.G.Sebald and Jonathan Raban come to mind immediately and for me, anyway, have set the standard for this kind of multi-disciplined writing. In recent years Robert Macfarlane and now Helen Macdonald have been rightly lauded and it seems that Katharine Norbury with The Fish Ladder is about to join their exalted company. There are doubtless others I haven't heard of or read yet and for as long as the public's interest is piqued there will surely soon be, if there aren't already, a seemingly endless succession of inferior imitators who will be enthusiastically promoted, flatter to deceive and muddy the waters so to speak. Before that clamour though I'd like to wave my flag for this little gem of a book which has already been enthusiastically reviewed, notably in the Guardian - http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/14/fredrik-sjoberg-hoverflies-the-fly-trap and by Malachy Tallack, founder of the excellent Island Review at Caught By The River – http://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2014/09/the-fly-trap-fredrick-sjoberg/. Apparently a 'best-seller' in its native Sweden, The Fly Trap is a wry, amusing and wholly delightful meditation on islands, solitude, travelling in the wilds of Burma, hoverflies, and the life and exploits of an obscure and possibly mad Swedish naturalist named Reneé Malaise who designed the fly trap of the title and which Fredrik Sjöberg uses to catch his beloved hoverflies. Sjöberg is an expert on Swedish hoverflies and has identified over two hundred different species on his small island of Runmarö alone and in part this book is about obsession and the virtues and pitfalls of blocking out the rest of the world to pursue one's own, often lonely, specialist path. But of course it is a lot more than than just that. A philosophy for a saner way of life underpins Sjöberg's dry, humourous prose and his self-effacing honesty is endearing and captivating. I started reading it on a train journey from London which, for once, wasn't nearly long enough. Mr.Sjöberg has joined my, albeit limited, gallery of Swedish heroes along with Kurt Wallander and Freddie Ljungberg.