I love words, music, science, food, films, TV, cycling and dogs. She/her. 🏳️🌈
Open remote profile ↗The New Yorker employee who sent this letter no longer works there, but the agent is still going and still represents Joseph Mitchell's estate.
I probably bought this in 2007, already a little faded and dusty. So it had sat around in the agent's office and then the Strand bookstore for years with no-one spotting this letter while the cheque was valid.
So: what's my responsibility here? Do I contact the agent?
4/
My first thought was I should get this cheque to its rightful owner. But Joseph Mitchell died in 1997, so this was a payment to his estate. It's only for $10.25 (suspect it would cost me that much to post it back to the US). And can you even pay in a cheque that's 25 years old?
3/
I finally picked the book off my TBR yesterday, only to find a letter tucked inside. It's from the New Yorker's legal department to the agent of one of the book's contributors, Joseph Mitchell. And still attached is the accompanying cheque for the reuse
2/
Book review: The Coral Bones by E J Swift
Some thoughts on this intriguing eco fiction from Australia, centred around the Great Barrier Reef. Educational, entertaining, depressing but also has moments of hope
https://noseinabook.co.uk/2026/10/23/book-review-the-coral-bones-by-e-j-swift/
Nose in a bookBook review: The Coral Bones by E J Swift | Nose in a book"The cities were complex symphonies, held together by a billion intricate algorithms, but every part of them was reliant upon this: the brute power harnessed from a sun that dealt death and deliverance in equal measure."