Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Joseph Mitchell, paper and pencil

The everyday carry:

He overhears snippets of conversation off to one side or another, and once in a while, maybe catching a well-turned phrase, he removes a folded piece of paper from his jacket and makes note of it. (His note-taking regimen has never changed: Before he goes out for the day, he takes a piece of New Yorker copy paper, folds it in half, then neatly folds it again into thirds — the perfect size to slide in and out of a coat pocket, where he also keeps his ever-ready pencil.)

Thomas Kunkel, Man in Profile: Joseph Mitchell of “The New Yorker” (New York: Random House, 2015).
A related post
Joseph Mitchell, scissors, paper clips

[See also Gay Talese: “I Don’t Use Notebooks. I Use Shirt Boards.”]

comments: 2

The Crow said...

Hmmm...sounds a lot like you, hunh?

Michael Leddy said...

Well, yes. I find that I share many of Mitchell’s habits, including his habit of collecting bits of the past. There’ll be an excerpt about his collecting soon.