VED MEHTA CELEBRATED THE NEW YORKER MANUAL

Mehta, who has written incisively about India for The New Yorker and has done a series of novels about himself and his family, says that he feels that the U.S.

VED MEHTA CELEBRATED THE NEW YORKER MANUAL

I think that in those days, the manual act of writing was considered physical labor - which intelligent people didn’t undertake easily. “Did you know that Henry James dictated all his writing? Because when you read him, you’d never know that he dictated. He goes on to add that dictating writing was not as unusual as it may sound. Also, you can ask the person to look up dictionaries and words, quotations,” he says, speaking frankly about his blindness and how he worked around it. I could have typed, but I can’t read back what I type, so it’s easier for me to dictate and ask the person I dictate to to read back. I can’t write at the same speed as I did, although I never did find it easy - I couldn’t write very fast, I had to dictate everything. Because the more you write, the more you know the pitfalls as well as the high points. “Easier? No, I find it more difficult each day. He also brings to life the world of The New Yorker in its years under William Shawn, who was his mentor and an editor he obviously admires a great deal, even years after Shawn’s departure and death in 1992.Īsked if his own writing has gotten easier with experience and time, he repeats the question with a grimace. He talks emotionally about the fact that as his 80th birthday nears next month, there is a Mehta revival going on with a series of his books being launched by Penguin India - Indian readers haven’t read him much, he acknowledges - and “The Essential Ved Mehta” resurrects some of his fine, detailed chronicling. Mehta is rarely seen at book launches and literary festivals, yet here he is for the new edition of his collected writings, drawing a laugh from his audiences during speeches, and later, while speaking to WWD, attentive though occasionally lapsing into exhausted silence.

Ved mehta celebrated the new yorker