His work primarily consists of character studies, where he used detailed portraits of people and events to highlight the commonplace of the world, especially in and around New York City.
As a journalism major, he was "a solid if not superior student," and he was successful in humanities courses such as history, language, music, and literature and explored classes in nearly every subject.
An unsteady relationship with his father and his lack of belonging in his two homes of North Carolina and New York left Mitchell isolated and listless for much of his life.
In a feature within The New Yorker magazine, Charles McGrath notes that "the critic Stanley Edgar Hyman first pointed out that the people Mitchell wrote about more and more resembled himself: loners, depressives, nostalgists, haunters of the waterfront, cherishers of arcane information.
After he died, his colleague Roger Angell wrote:Each morning, he stepped out of the elevator with a preoccupied air, nodded wordlessly if you were just coming down the hall, and closed himself in his office.
He emerged at lunchtime, always wearing his natty brown fedora (in summer, a straw one) and a tan raincoat; an hour and a half later, he reversed the process, again closing the door.
Therese Jacobson and their children, Nora and Elizabeth, retained nothing but fond memories of their father, even though they knew he was struggling in his career.
On his gravestone his daughters inscribed a quote from Shakespeare's seventy-third sonnet, one of his favorite lines in literature: "Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
The February 11, 2013, edition of The New Yorker includes a previously unpublished portion of Mitchell's unfinished autobiography entitled "Street Life: Becoming Part of the City.
The piece, later published in Mitchell's collection of essays in Up in the Old Hotel, creates and canonizes Mazie, a woman who worked in the ticket booth of The Venice theater.
Mitchell's meticulous reporting skills result in an account of Mazie complete with factual details, close observation, and direct quotations.
Critics believe Mazie resembles Mitchell himself: they share an affinity for remembering small facts and giving attention to the overlooked members of society.
Detective Kain of the Oak Street Police Station declares that Mazie “has the roughest tongue and the softest heart in the Third Precinct.
In Mitchell's profile, her life is confined to the ticket booth of the movie theater where she socializes with “bums” that come and go from the surrounding flophouses.
He goes on to further describe Mitchell's temporal dimension as a "strange and twilight place where a density of historical fact and the feeling of whole eras fading from view are sharply juxtaposed with the senses of cinematic immediacy related in the present tense.
The most notable example of "Mitchell time" is seen in the story Mr. Hunter's Grave where the narrative tells of the overlapping of many eras occurring in one small location.
From North Carolina he “brought an interest in wildflowers” and these flowers “could be found most easily in overgrown cemeteries around New York City.” [23] Mitchell managed to discover these quaint everyday places as he would often set off to work in his New Yorker office, but instead, he would carry on walking, taking in NYC and its landscape.
The elevator shaft, the equipment, nor the space above have not been used or even really touched since it was closed off, making it a particularly risky endeavor for both of the men, and upon realizing it is safe to use, they travel up to the old hotel that hasn't been seen by anyone in decades.
One day, Mitchell wakes up, admittedly feeling stressed from his surroundings, packs a couple sandwiches, and decides to go down to Staten Island to explore the cemeteries.
Mitchell walks the reader through a number of cemeteries he enjoys walking in on days like that day, which include places such as “Woodrow Methodist Church on Woodrow Road in the Woodrow community, or to the cemetery of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on the Arthur Kill Road in the Rossville community, or to one on the Arthur Kill Road on the outskirts of Rossville” before leading the reader to The South Shore, a more rural part of Staten Island, where trees tend to dominate, and a place where some of the oldest graveyards can be found, (Mitchell).
Mitchell continues his exploration of several graveyards, stopping at gravestones, studying them, reading the names off them, and moving vines and dirt from certain ones he ponders upon.
Mitchell, using the information given to him by Mr. Brock, contacts Mr. Hunter, and sets up a time to meet the man at his house that coming Saturday morning, for him to explore Sandy Ground.
The older women of Sandy Ground, including Mr. Hunter's mother, believed that its roots had healing properties, even though others generally regard them as poisonous.
Following this, there's commentary about what kind of wood Mr. Hunter's house is built of, and talk about how much he despises flies while the two men are sitting on the porch (as well as a discussion about the history of Sandy Ground, which started due to the wanting of oysters).
[27] In this article, Rosenwald explores his own relationship with Mitchell, stating how the man influenced both himself and other generations of writers and how his favorite article by him is "Mr. Hunter's Grave", then goes into his disappointment about what was put in the Kunkel biography, stating, “For me, learning these things was like a kid discovering his favorite baseball player whacked long home runs while juicing on steroids,” showing the betrayal he felt.
[30] The gig was that Chrissy and her crew would lure ships in “with false lights, & they killed the sailors & the passengers, so there wouldn't be any tales told”.
Ultimately though, nothing came of the rumors with Mitchell calling it “studio commissary gossip” and stating that “the only truth in it is that a writer has been assigned to try and work out a script on dragger finishing, using the Profile as background”.
[22] Critics credit Mitchell's strength as a writer to his "skills as an interviewer, photographic representation of his characters and their speech, deadpan humor, and graceful, unadorned prose style".
[33] Critics also note that it is Mitchell's "respect and compassion for his subjects" that allows him to explore uncomfortable themes like "mortality, change, and the past".
[33] Throughout Mitchell's career, he has been praised for his "ear for dialogue and eye for detail, genuine interest in the lives of his subjects, rhythmic, simple prose".