Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing (Continents of Exile) [Paperback]

Ved Mehta (Author)

Book Description

Series: Continents of Exile | Publication Date: May 1, 1999

A marvelous portrait of "The New Yorker" during the tenure of legendary editor-in-chief William Shawn by one of its most distinguished contributors.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ved Mehta has often been accused of being the least lively, most irrelevant writer at the New Yorker magazine. 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. 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.

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. Only in the New Yorker, kids, could anyone in the magazine biz get away with the sky-high idealism Mehta eloquently describes. 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.

Writing about Mr. 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. 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.

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. Did you know that the talented writer Maeve Brennan went insane and lived in the New Yorker's ladies' room until she started smashing the glass portion of the business manager's door? (For the full story, see William Maxwell's introduction to Brennan's brilliant Springs of Affection, posthumously released in 1997.) Mehta is also in some ways in a better position than Lillian Ross to explain her function in William Shawn's life: "desk-bound as he was, and hemmed in by his phobias, [Shawn] relied on Lillian as his special eyes and ears, to keep him abreast of things going on in the city and in the culture at large."

Alas, times in the publishing industry changed brutally, while Mr. Shawn did not. Mehta gives good dirt about the bloody battle for succession to Shawn's throne--one of the plotters was dubbed "the Slasher." He never gives deeper insights than when he tells a story about the New Yorker's troubles as only an insider could while entirely, sublimely missing the point as only a New Yorker insider can. He's so loyal to his editor that he seems unaware that sometimes the man and the magazine were simply wrong, particularly when facts were altered in small ways in essays not billed as fiction.

Yet as countless New Yorker writers will tell you in person, but few have described in print, Mr. Shawn was also an editorial genius and a titanic soul. It is a privilege to be introduced to him by Mr. Mehta. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A poignant tribute from a flawed but well-placed Boswell, Mehta's book revisits (through memories, letters and interviews) the career of William Shawn, who edited the New Yorker from 1951 to 1987. During his self-effacing stewardship, Shawn shifted the emphasis of the magazine from the satire and whimsy of his predecessor, Harold Ross, to serious in-depth reportage, all the while maintaining the elegance and integrity for which the magazine was famous?qualities generally thought to have faded from its pages since his departure. As the eighth volume in the memoir series Continents of Exile, Mehta's account suffers from a dual focus. Like the real Boswell, Mehta (who joined the New Yorker's staff in 1959 and was "terminated" by Tina Brown in 1994) tends to get in the way of his more interesting mentor, dropping names, telling tales and settling scores with tiresome self-importance; at times his adulation of Shawn seems to call less for a memoir than for a few hours on the analyst's couch. But, even a decade after publishing tycoon S.I. Newhouse asserted his new control of the magazine by firing Shawn and replacing him with Robert Gottlieb, Mehta's nostalgia for the "old," independent New Yorker is still contagious. Indeed, once he jogs our memory, it comes almost as a shock that something as eccentric and rigorously uncommercial as Shawn's New Yorker could have existed so recently, or vanished so completely from the literary scene. In his chronicles, Mehta builds a powerful, very moving case for the punctilious, "invisible art" of his former boss.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 414 pages
• Publisher: Overlook TP; Expanded edition (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879517077
• ISBN-13: 978-0879517076
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #857,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I enjoyed this book., December 18, 1998

By 

Capt. Mike (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker (Hardcover)

I had never read any of Ved Mehta's books or articles before this. He offers an interesting glimpse into the New Yorker and "Mr. Shawn's" role as editor of the fabled magazine. He also offers a look into a writers life as he describes how the New Yorker cultivated and nurtured the writers it had in it's cubicles. I never subscribed to the New Yorker during William Shawn's time as editor. But, a few years ago I snuck into the old offices on 43rd Street. The writers cubicles were gone but, there outlines were still on the floor. There were odd pieces here and there of the writers who once filled the spaces were scattered about. A pencil here, an old wooden easel there, an old office chair, notes and drawings scribbled on a wall. Mehta fills in the space and one can almost here the clacking of typewriters and muffled conversations as writers work in a unique environment of a unique magazine. It seemed like a very interesting time to be a writer there. Before the Tina Brown's bought "Celebrity Culture" to the magizine. A time when editors like Shawn were more interested in ideas than superficial popularity.

Mike Girardo New York

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Time passing., May 27, 2001

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing (Continents of Exile) (Paperback)

Intriguing and informative look at a title (and by extension, an industry) in transition. Clearly illustrates both the reasons for and effects of corporate acquisition of magazines. Mehta's tone of hero worship for Shawn is occasionally grating. In fairness, this may be earned, as the Mr. Shawn in this book has many qualities you'd expect from a quiet hero. Fascinating stuff.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow. Tough room., October 23, 2006

By 

Anthony Noel (New Bern, NC, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing (Continents of Exile) (Paperback)

I'm surprised three of the prior four reviewers found this title deserving of just four stars. I found this book to be an illuminating work, exposing the intriguing convergence of factors that made The New Yorker great in its formative years. It wasn't Mr. Shawn alone, but the culture he created. He created it by example, and his example drove the magazine's writers to a level of excellence rarely seen since.

The author's success in capturing the tone Shawn set is powerful testimony to Ved Metha's skill as a writer. But beyond that, his book brings into focus a management style sorely lacking in today's enterprises, be they magazines, professional offices, retail stores -- whatever. That style is one which prizes pleasing the customer over profits, because it recognizes that happy customers are the KEY to long-term profitability.

Should we be surprised that our publications have become cursory instruments which place a greater emphasis on flashy advertising than on editorial substance when the vast majority of "publishers" have climbed the accounting side of their particular corporation's ladder, rather than the editorial side?

Editors of Mr. Shawn's caliber no longer exist because what used to be their primary job -- ensuring the accuracy and quality of editorial content -- no longer exists. Gone are the fact checkers and the grammarians, not to mention intelligent writers, able to produce 5,000 incisive words on the economy as easily as 7,000 on border disputes in the Middle East. And those writers are gone because their publications' ownerships lack the business sense necessary to build a following (or the attention span to appreciate any article which does not end on the same page upon which it begins).

And as sure as these bean-counting bottom liners have no business being publishers, any editor who hasn't read this book shouldn't be editing anything.