Joseph Mitchell’s Literary Journalism

Between the 1930s and 60s, writer Joseph Mitchell kept The New Yorker real. Week after week, he gave the magazine's elite readership portraits of people who live in the city's fringes. He specializied in misfits and outcasts — saloon-keepers, street preachers, gypsies and a 93-year-old "seafoodetarian" who believed that his special diet would keep him alive for another 20 years. Those stories were some of hte most beloved in the magazine's history. Mitchell died in 1996. Now he himself has been profiled in a new biography by Thomas Kunkel.  Kunkel tells us about Mitchell's life and work.