"Up in the old hotel and other stories" de Joseph Mitchell (USA)

These collected stories by Joseph Mitchell are the best way for us to try to understand the American myth, the American dream and disillusion. Life is a little crazy thing and Mitchell’s art is to make with words pictures of women and men like they live with all the strength and kindness for them.

Authors like Paul Auster, Henry Roth and Philipp Roth have, maybe not maybe yes, it depends, the same feeling about Big Apple but like him a huge imagination and art to make us wonder.

Mitchell works on short stories like an entomologist or like a surgeon, he cuts when it’s most efficient to cut, he tells us a sensational truth and lead us in the labyrinth near of the limits of madness or strange very strange world. It’s a cult book! And it’s more than interesting to read it, it’s a travel on the human consciousness and a goal of the life with at the end of the book Joe Gould’s secret we find truly like a Borges’ story!

 

Et la version française :

Le Merveilleux saloon de McSorley; récits New-Yorkais de JosephMitchell, Traduit par Bernard Hoepffner. Editions Diaphanes, avril2016.

Up in the old hotel and other stories (1938-1992) by Joseph Mitchell (1908-1996),Vintage Books, Random House.

François Szábo