There were some years, some people, and one country that took the famous fusion between literature and journalism to very high levels: so-called literary journalism. The years are hard to define, the 50s and 60s of course. People, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, Michael Herr, Joan Didion, Gay Talese: It is nothing but a list that positions the reader. It is clear that the country is the United States of America, but nothing will happen if its focus turns to New York.
It was there in the perfect American metropolis that he developed his entire career. Joseph Mitchell (Fairmont, 1908-New York, 1996), one of those patient men in the hat, suit, and waistcoat, less famous than any of his other colleagues around the world. New Yorker (the journal in which the focus will be), perhaps (this is an assumption) because his methodical, patient, slow prose was not made for the general public.
Two of his highly recommended books were published in Spain. Joe Gould’s Secret (2000) and now lower part of the harbora compilation of six articles originally published New Yorker Let’s say the common denominator is water: all of them take place on the New York coast, far away from the geography where the New York stereotype is consolidated.
Methodical and patient writing
In fact, articles take place just like stories or novels: it is one of the literary qualities they display. But not alone. Mitchell puts this methodical and patient piece at the service of pieces that leave the reader with the remarkable impression that there is nothing more to learn on the subject. When it comes to trawling in New York waters, Mitchell details the trawlers, their costs, their catches, nets, the exact location of their mussel nests, and each wreck near shore. He makes detailed lists of the fish they caught (“flounder, flounder, yellow flounder, mendos, and sand turbot”) and devotes pages to the lobster and describes how the fishermen on board prepared it. All this in one article, drag patternbut the rest is the same.
Inside riversidedives tarpon fishing off the Hudson waters in the spring and pays attention to people, places, customs, history, settings, strategies, everything. The articles form a unit not because they talk about life around the New York sea and river, but because together they form a complete picture of a way of life that probably didn’t exist at this point.
Brilliant article devoted to rats in New York, which would not have had much to do with the sea if it weren’t for the fact that the rodents populating the city were arriving on docked ships (and are about to spread the black spot). plague). The book is an unusual postcard, it’s gorgeous because it’s rare. New York, beyond its skyscrapers, in its obscene splendor.
It is a shining example of the magnificence that the union between journalism and literature can achieve, and an oasis to drink in at times when the press is increasingly denying its literary spirit. Not bad: some journalistic rhetoric in lame times.
‘bottom of the harbor’
Joseph Mitchell
Translation of Alex Gibert
anagram
248 pages
€19,90