He wore a suit with a tie and a hat every day. Since the fall of 1938, when he was hired by The New Yorker magazine, when he wasn’t on the streets reporting, he’d come to his office at nine and leave at six.

As soon as morning came, he closed the door behind him and went to work. Yet from 1964 to 1996, when he died, he did not publish a single line in the magazine. Thirty-two years of silence. After his death, they went through the files in his office looking for unpublished treasures. All they found was an incomplete autobiography that made no sense.

His name is Joseph Mitzell (Joseph Mitcell, 1908-1996). Legend of American journalism. A writing demon of reporting from the field, he identified with the people he wrote about, the cabaret women and prostitutes of Manhattan, the voodoo believers, the lonely suburbs, the melancholy types of city and port. He enjoyed writing stories involving anonymous people, although one of his best-known works was covering the trial of the kidnapping and death of the infant Lindbergh. Never writing anything purely literary, his reports in the newspapers of the time, but especially in The New Yorker, inspired not only other journalists, but also writers and bibliophiles. Perhaps because he symbolized the embodiment of journalism that went beyond it.

He became a prisoner of his mythology, his image, the weight of “another masterpiece.”

A low-key guy, somewhat sad, but with a good sense of humor, he lived in marriage with the same woman for half a century. Skinny, but not too skinny. In other words, not the stereotypical mid-twentieth-century American reporter.

He wrote a lot, and walked even more. Surprisingly, although for three decades he did not give his editors a single article (he did not even suggest a topic), there could be no question of dismissal. What’s even more amazing is that he didn’t miss his office either. According to veteran journalist Charles McGrath, who worked with him, and his biographer Thomas Kunkel (Thomas Kunkel, “Man in Profile. Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker”, Random House, 2015), he became a prisoner of his mythology, his image, weight that “another masterpiece” that everyone expected from him.

Mr. Gray tries to picture him in his office every morning for eight hours in a suit (“combat” in other words) fighting. And yet he never complained, never murmured. He has resigned himself to his half maturity. But he never gave up.