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Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art
of Editing Ved Mehta (Sinclair-Stevenson, £19.99)
Somebody should edit an Oxford Book of Press Anecdotes.
When journalists retire, they often write their memoirs. They
remember funny episodes.They covered world events and are now
free to divulge things they could not reveal at the time. And
writing is their trade. To miss out Ved Mehta as an ingredient
in the cauldron would be a big mistake. His book is in the top
five of all the journalists' autobiographies I have read.
He was 25 in 1959 when he first met William Shawn, who was editor-in-chief
of The New Yorker from 1952 to 1987. Mr Mehta's first
article appeared in the magazine in 1960 and in 1961 he was given
an office.
It is difficult to explain why this book is so enjoyable. Shawn
was a diffident, shy man.The magazine under his rule would cause
modern management to gasp with horror. It was old-fashioned, ceremonious
and ran articles at enormous length.
It may sound like a recipe for a low-key story, but Mr Mehta's
account is vivid. First, there is the chanson de geste
of his brave acclimatisation to New York—disastrous experiments
in cooking; loneliness later alleviated by love affairs. He is
always rawly honest—for example, admitting his jealousy
when Shawn appoints a younger man deputy editor. And he writes
with a crystalline clarity, finely honed when Shawn was his tutor.
The story ends with debacle. The magazine is taken over by modernisers;
both Mr Shawn and Mr Mehta are let go. Mr Mehta writes about these
events like a monk describing the dissolution of the monasteries.
Luckily, they could not retire him as a book-writer.
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