Man in Profile is an excellent biography of Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker. Thomas Kunkel wrote a biography of another New Yorker writer, Harold Ross, as well as other books about journalism. The idea of creative non-fiction and "new journalism" has become almost standard these days, but Mitchell and some others were influential pioneers, and his work still remains some of the best.

One thing I noticed while reading Mitchell is most of the subjects are of a certain age, typically born prior to 1880. This generation, born between about 1860 and 1880, were hugely important in creating the modern world, they had one foot in the old world and another in the modern. But even by the 1930s, when he began profiling them, the generation was already beginning to fade, and by the 1960s mostly gone. Is it any wonder his writing also dried up? His muse was no more. It's perhaps no accident his father was also from this same period, and Mitchell, who had one foot in New York and the other in North Carolina, was like a man caught between two worlds. ( )

This is a solid, fine, literary biography of the man from down the road from my hometown, who went to NYC as a young man and became the chronicler of Old New York even as it was disappearing in the 50's and 60's.
Kunkel is so intrigued with Mitchell's choices in writing composites of characters and presenting them as real individuals and with the choices that led to his long, long writer's block that he maybe doesn't give us as much of the man's personality as I would have liked. Mitchell does emerge, though, as a person I would have adored to know. And Kunkel prints lots and lots of excerpts from Mitchell's pieces; I am happy to have his collection Up in the Old Hotel to read and enjoy at my leisure. ( )

A lovely biography of the New Yorker author of long articles about Fulton fish market, Hudson River, McSorely's saloon, . ( )

One gets an picture of the New York of the early/mid 20th century when Mitchell wrote for The New Yorker and some of the odd-ball characters of the time. ( )