AnyDay by Henry Mitchell preface by John Gallman was born thanks to the love of Mr. Gallman from Washington for his land. Although Mr Gallman at some point left his native State for Indiana, he continued to receive The Washington Post appreciating in particular the articles by Henry Mitchell about gardening.Mitchell anyway loved also to writing about customs and society, I would classify these articles in that way, and when Mitchell died the idea of publishing some pieces of his column AnyDay, the last article appeared on October 5 1984, the first on Dec 29 1973, born thanks to an intuition of Mitchell's wife Virginia. Mr.Gallman appreciated the gardening pieces by Henry Mitchell but these ones...Could they find readers? Yes because Henry Mitchell in that pieces writes about customs, about society. There is everything for everyone but this everything for everyone will be sufficient? thought Gallman.
Gallman started to read these pieces and wow! yes, they deserved to be published!
Henry Mitchell wrote about a potpourri of facts: from his aunt real rats hunter, to bad and good coffee, or bad and good food, passing through the advent of a so-called new curse for the world according to the conservatives, AIDS, to Christmas, without forgetting Richard Nixon's tapes. He portrays a stunning portrait of E.B.White, but will also write about dogs and other animals as well. Mitchell has a special fixation you will find also when he doesn't write directly of it: he loves Christmas and when he can writes of it, it does it with joy.
Mitchell is dense and ironic at the same time, never "light" in his writing-style and AnyDay is this: the image of a country lived and seen through the eye of this columnist per years. A picture each time of new customs, new problems, new ideas, or just little facts of his ordinary day.
The cover is beautiful and the book created with great love.
Enjoy this book.
Highly recommended.
I thank Indiana University Press for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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