“Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a 93-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades.”
I bought a paperback copy of Up In The Old Hotel in the New York section of the amazing McNally Jackson Bookshop, now located on Prince Street, NYC. An old friend called Tom recommended I read it. He told me the backdrop to the stories of the Bowery, Oysters, Clams, Madams, Brothels and all the weird and wonderful folk that Joseph Mitchell writes about in this book about old New York. If Joyce wrote Ulysses so “If Dublin were to be destroyed, Ulysses could be used to rebuild it brick by brick” then Jospeh Mitchell may have tried the same with his collection of short stories. Some (maybe all?) of which he wrote for the New Yorker.
This collection is split up into McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbour and Joe Gould’s Secret.
Needless to say, as an Irish person, and a whenever-I-am-in-town-regular of McSorley’s ale house, that section of the book pricked my eyes and ears.
He writes the most amazing and intricate detail of the history, the characters and the customs of McSorley’s. And, of course, I read lots of it whilst sitting or standing in McSorleys and getting the barman to point out the artefacts from the books. He was delighted to do so.
McSorley’s is great – you can’t buy 1 beer or 1 pint, you can only buy 2 beers that make up 1 pint and you must pay cash According to barman lore this is so the men who frequented McSorley’s (it was one of the last of the “Men Only” pubs, admitting women only after legally being forced to do so in 1970) would never have to say commit to going for the one because no man wants just the one, so this way they get 2…or something like that.
The book contains stories about the New York environs during the time the whole downtown area came to life, it goes into the characters from the shipyards and trawlers, and areas of Brooklyn like Gowanus. The details of the various ways you can eat a clam or an oyster or how a gypsy curse works are so wonderful you could read the collection again, and again and again and never get bored.
My advice: try and read it in New York and walk the areas afterwards. It really adds to the experience of reading the book. It’s amazing to see what the areas he writes about have now become.
Favourite lines
“lf you’re determined to fight the devil, you might as well get right up in the front-line trenches.”
“There were god old souls among those men and there were leeches among them, leeches and lepers and Judases, and I imagine the cast of characters down in McSorley’s is about the same.”
“Oysters shut their shells and quit feeding and begin to hibernate when the temperature of the water in which they lie goes down to forty-one degrees; in three or four days, they free themselves of whatever germs they may have taken in, and then they are clean and safe.”
“Oh, Jesus, I was nervous. When I started up the coast with her, I took a quart of gin along, in case of disappointment, but I didn’t even unscrew the cap.”
“Drinking alone gives me the mumbles”
