

We are extremely sorry to learn about the passing of Ved Mehta. But his vivid, eccentric, almost Thurberesquely embittered memoir of his life there stands as the most revealing book yet on the most fascinating magazine in modern history. Howitzer is a highly nuanced cross between the magazine’s first editor, Harold Ross, who ran The New Yorker from 1925 until his death, in 1951, and its second, William Shawn, who edited the. Ved Mehta, a pre-Independent Indian writer who was blind, died at the age of 86 in New York. That's right, it's more revealing than Brendan Gill's classic Here at the New Yorker, Jay McInerney's cocaine-edged satirical roman à clef, Bright Lights, Big City, and Here but Not Here: A Love Story, by Lillian Ross, the mistress of the mag's legendary editor William Shawn. 83 PERSONAL HISTORY about English classical scholar Jasper Griffin writer met him at Balliol. It speaks volumes about the nature of the New Yorker that Mehta is capable of saying-apropos of one of his articles about theologians-that "writing about God presented special difficulties, both because of the nature of the subject and because of the sensibilities of the various believers." Mehta is dead serious here, as he apparently always is. A LASTING IMPRESSION By Ved Mehta NovemThe New Yorker, NovemP. The Invisible Art of Editing (Pre-Owned Hardcover 9780879518769) by Ved Mehta. Only in the New Yorker, kids, could anyone in the magazine biz get away with the sky-high idealism Mehta eloquently describes. A memoir of writer Mehtas thirty-three years of work with The New Yorker. Associated with the magazine for over three decades, much of his celebrated works began as articles in its pages. And only a guy like Mehta could describe the specifics of Shawn's invisible art of editing and the human maelstrom that swirled around him. Mehta was a staff writer at The New Yorker for 33 years.

Shawn presents special difficulties because he worked in mysterious ways and thwarted attempts to cast light on him as effectively as a black hole in outer space. But Mehta was a sort of surrogate son to Shawn, not only part of the innermost circle of the xenophobic publication but sometimes the sole non-family member invited to the Shawns' Thanksgiving feasts. Born in Lahore to a well-off Punjabi family, he lost his sight when he. Mehta takes us to the parties where the phenomenally repressed Shawn "cut loose" (who would've guessed this was one of his favorite phrases?), pounding out "Anything Goes" and "Don't Fence Me In" on the piano in a rocking stride style. Ved Mehta, a writer for The New Yorker for more than thirty years, died at the age of eighty-six, on Saturday morning. The best stuff in the book is its portrait of Mr. Shawn's intriguing wife, Cecille, the comments of their movie-famous son Wallace (coauthor of My Dinner with Andre), and the bilious dinner-table and office gossip that Mehta lets us overhear.
