All of the stories here, by the author of Joe Gould's Secret, are connected in one way or another with the waterfront of New York City in the 1940s and 50s. Joseph Mitchell's tales, originally published in The New Yorker, record the lives and practices of the rivermen with affection and understanding, and a sharp eye for the eccentric and strange.
"His account of an old seaman's hotel, rats and plague, dragger captains and shad fishermen are what James Joyce might have written had he gone into journalism."—Newsweek
