|
"One need only glance at the credentials of Ved Mehta, who
joined the teaching staff at Williams for this semester as an
Arnold Bernhard Visiting Professor of English and history, to
see that Williams has gained a gifted mind. A staff writer for
The New Yorker magazine between 1961 and 1993, Mehta
has written on philosophy, religion, history, linguistics, history,
his family and his childhood. He has won extensive writing honors,
including two Guggenheim Fellowships, the MacArthur Prize Fellowship,
the New York City Mayor’s Liberty Medal and the New York
Public Library Lion Medal.
Mehta has published 19 books (both fiction and non-fiction),
seven of which are volumes of his autobiography. Mehta’s
accomplishments are not only in print, moreover. The television
documentary film Mehta both wrote and narrated, "Chachaji:
My Poor Relation," won the DuPont Columbia Award
for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism in 1978.
A lifelong commitment to writing
Despite these impressive accomplishments, however, Mehta does
not proclaim to have mastered the art of writing. “I don’t
call myself a ‘writer’ because I feel that writing
is a lifetime apprenticeship; each time you finish a book, you
have to start all over. That’s the terrifying part about
writing. You can’t rest on your laurels—no matter
how good you are, you can always read a page of Chekov or Shakespeare
or Proust, and be put in your place,” Mehta explained.
When asked about writers that have most influenced him, Mehta
replied, “I am a very dilettanteish reader. I’ve read
a lot of Proust, Chekov, Shakespeare, Milton, Conrad, Nabokov
and John Updike. I’m very much a traditionalist. I feel
my world would be poorer if l didn’t have every one of those
writers.”
Having taught English and history at several other academic institutions,
including Bard, Sara Lawrence, New York University, and Yale,
Mehta wrote to President Oakley for a possible teaching position
after receiving an honorary degree from Williams in 1986. After
being informed that he had been appointed Arnold Bernhard Visiting
Professor, Mehta decided to begin teaching in the spring semester
of this year.
One of the two classes that Mehta is teaching this semester is
History 276, “India since Independence, 1947 - present.”
Mehta feels that courses on Indian history are crucial in today’s
world. “One out of six people alive today is an Indian.
For historical reasons, most good colleges have had courses about
China but not India,” Mehta said.
“I have felt [studies about India] are a need. I would
like to teach an earlier period [of Indian history] but there
is not much interest. The culture is changing now. There are streams
of Asian cultures coming into Western culture. What I do in my
seminar is to try to introduce students to India since 1947. I
start out by teaching about political narrative, and then branch
out into the cultural, economic and social aspects of India,”
Mehta continued.
“I am an amalgam”
While Mehta’s Indian heritage is an important aspect of
his self-identity, he is a product of several cultures. In his
speech last April at Weston Language Center, entitled “Continents
of Exile: Autobiography as a Metaphor,” Mehta spoke about
being a part of many worlds. “I am an amalgam of five cultures:
Indian, British, American, Blind, and The New Yorker,”
Mehta said. “Before I started writing my books, I thought
they crippled me, but when I stared, I found that they in fact
enriched me. I’ve been able to work myself out of the conflicts
that exist [between the five cultures]. I found a resolution in
writing.”
It is in his autobiographies that Mehta combines elements of
all his different “cultures.” The second class Mehta
is currently teaching is English 386, Writing Autobiography. When
asked to explain his apparent fondness for the autobiography as
a genre of writing, Mehta said, “I think that [the autobiography]
is a contemporary form of writing suited to our period because
it’s between fiction and non-fiction. One uses the same
techniques that one would use for fiction, and yet it is non-fiction.”
Each volume of Mehta’s autobiographies revolves around
a central theme or metaphor, such as education or blindness. “The
idea is not to tell my life,” Mehta said, “but to
recreate the lives of others.... I’m just the narrator.
They’re written like novels. Each is separated, yet connected
because they’ve all been a part of my life in one way or
another.”
In the lecture he gave last year at Williams, Mehta called himself
“an unremarkable man writing about unremarkable people.”
He continued, “All I’m trying to do is tell a story
not of one life, but of many lives—and through these stories,
to say something that’s universal.”
A New Yorker veteran
Mehta was a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine
between 1961 and 1993; he speaks with fondness about his days
writing for the magazine. “The New Yorker, at least for
me, was a place where I could write my own ticket to freedom....
Nobody ever told me what I should write about. I wrote about whatever
I wanted to write, and if they published it, I got paid,”
Mehta said. “It was a unique magazine in the sense that
it really was just a loose association of writers and editors
who pursued their own interests, so that something unexpected
emerged every week. We didn’t worry then about who would
read the magazine or what the market wanted,” Mehta reminisced.
“Now,” Mehta continued, “all this has changed.
There have been dramatic changes in the publishing world, in the
marketplace, and in the personnel at The New Yorker.”
Mehta cited television and computers as important factors that
have helped to bring about this change in society.
Ved Mehta takes
no responsibility for and makes no claim of accuracy for any information
on this Web site that is not directly written by him. |
