Abstract

Mitchell's Wonderful McSorley

The article focuses on the book "McSorley's Wonderful Saloon" by the author Joseph Mitchell. Genre paintings resemble feature stories. They take a mellow, or raffish, or appetizing area of life and memorialize it by the affection they have for their subject. Too often, unfortunately, they remain ephemeral, registering but a moment of warmth. But artist John Sloan's painting of McSorley's, an old bar on East Seventh Street, in New York, is still remembered. And other painters, though somewhat less impressively, have also inscribed their affection for the place. Now Joseph Mitchell, ex-newspaperman who contributes special features to the New Yorker, has assembled twenty of these pieces and put them in a book with the title of "McSorley's Wonderful Saloon."