Up in the Old Hotel

Like a Coney Island sideshow barker who might have appeared in one of Mitchell's New Yorker profiles, this collection promises an uncommon world. And it delivers, in compassionate, wistful examinations of early-20th-century New Yorkers who share a common trait: they exist on the outskirts of society in either habit or mind. There is nine-year-old Philippa Duke Schuyler, who has an IQ of 185 and ``reads Plutarch on train trips, eats steaks raw, writes poems in honor of her dolls, plays poker, and is the composer of more than sixty pieces for the piano.'' Also compelling are profiles of New York places, as much characters as people are. Mitchell's writing on McSorley's Saloon, the Union League of the Deaf, Sloppy Louie's--all either gone or changed--captures the town in its days as a manufacturing center. If the four sections in this collection ( McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, Joe Gould's Secret ) evoked only a long-lost New York, they would still be worthwhile. But there is more. Mitchell speaks of facts that enlighten and redeem--the book's greatest gift. (Aug.)