He also went back each day for the process and the companionship. It was a room where you could hardly fit a coffin.“ My office was half the size of this room or less. John Updike was a staff writer, and he never went to the office - or very seldom, anyway. “You know, writing is a solitary occupation, so I found it more helpful to go to the office, but no one had to. Mehta worked out of the offices of The New Yorker for years. “I think he is a brave man and a brave writer,” he says about Rushdie, pointing out that his writing is unique and “sometimes irritating.” Naipaul “polemical” and Salman Rushdie a “kind of a literary phenomenon.” “I love the work of Vikram Seth and Anita Desai,” he says, adding that he finds the best work of V.S. “On the other hand, can you imagine Joyce not being Irish or Dickens not being an Englishman? The nationality of the writer does have a big impact on what they write.”Īs writing from and about the Indian subcontinent has influenced world literature over the last decade, Mehta hasn’t quite disregarded it either. I’m excited by new authors, and it is more important that the writing speaks to me, just as the first time I read Virginia Woolf, I was very excited,” he observes.Īfter a moment’s thought, Mehta adds a caveat, in which geography or nationality becomes primary. “I’m not so conscious about the nationality of the author. Rather, he’s a “rootless writer,” he says, adding that good writing should not be limited by geography. and India have equal weight in his consciousness, and that he thinks of himself as belonging to neither of the countries as a writer. 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. 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.
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