{"product_id":"the-lost-years-of-joseph-scott-schomburg-9798896230953","title":"The Lost Years of Joseph Mitchell","description":"\u003cb\u003eA revelatory biography of the legendary \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e journalist Joseph Mitchell that focuses on his infamous three-decade-long writer's block and sheds light on the private productivity of those years.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFrom 1938 to 1964, Joseph Mitchell published unforgettable profiles as a staff writer at \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, portraits of ordinary people in disappearing worlds on the edges of New York City. His stories of Fulton Fish Market, Greenwich Village wanderer Joe Gould, McSorley's Old Ale House, and a graveyard caretaker on the South Shore of Staten Island earned Mitchell the reputation of a writer's writer. Then his byline vanished from print. For thirty-one years, the story goes, he went to his office almost every day, worked behind a closed door, and never submitted another piece. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThrough a chance encounter with one of Mitchell's closest friends and a meticulous examination of new and unpublished material, Scott Schomburg discovers another Mitchell, one who would leave his desk to visit an old cemetery or enter a demolition site, where, he said, he worked as hard as he ever did. During this decades-long silence, Mitchell was engaged in a different form of writing: an obsessive collecting and note-taking that he hoped would preserve lives otherwise lost to time. It was a restless pursuit of the eternal in the everyday of a dying world. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFollowing in Mitchell's footsteps from his childhood in the swamps of North Carolina to his last years in a rapidly changing New York, \u003ci\u003eThe Lost Years of Joseph Mitchell\u003c\/i\u003e is a revelation of new insight about a legendary writer and his work. Schomburg's lucid and poignant narrative captures Mitchell's unique blend of the apocalyptic and elegiac. It's the kind of story Mitchell himself might have written.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Scott Schomburg\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798896230953\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e New York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/09\/2027\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 176\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.81lbs","brand":"Scott Schomburg","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48748326355199,"sku":"9798896230953","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-lost-years-of-joseph-scott-schomburg-9798896230953","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}