Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker
Ved Mehta has often been accused of being the least lively, most irrelevant writer at theNew Yorkermagazine. 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 classicHere at the  New Yorker, Jay McInerney's cocaine-edged satirical roman à clef,Bright Lights, Big City, andHere  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 theNew Yorkerthat 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 theNew 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 ofMy 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 theNew 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 brilliantSprings 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 theNew Yorker's troubles as only an insider could while entirely, sublimely missing the point as only aNew Yorkerinsider 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 countlessNew Yorkerwriters 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