> Anyone caught a glimpse of _Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The > Invisibile Art of Editing_ by Ved Mehta? It sounds like info that may > enlighten our discussion a bit and before I order it and spend $ I don't > have, I suppose I'm looking for encouragement...will When the talk this morning of editing and editors came across my screen, I had wanted to mention this book. I just finished it; it's splendid. It is the closest I've seen so far in the way it describes the magazine's editorial process. I learned a tremendous amount from it, and can't recommend it too highly. Also, in a mostly unrelated note, a new book by Lillian Ross, _Here but not Here_, describes her 40-year personal relationship with Mr. Shawn. In there is a lovely and surprising picture of her son, when he was a year or two old (this would have been in 1966 or so) being held in her apartment by ... "Jerry Salinger"! Our hero looks quite joyful and carefree and unlike anything I've ever seen in his pictures. There's life in the eyes, in the body language, in the facial expression. And there's a wonderful standby, _Editors on Editing_, which is a series of essays. Not to be missed: Gerry Howard's "Mistah Perkins, He Dead," on the loss of the old traditions in publishing, and Faith Sale's essay on work she did for a novel by a friend of mine from years back. (For those of us who wonder how a veteran editor approaches a work by a novice writer.) The sad part is that as bleak as the Howard essay is, it pales when we consider the greater ruthlessness we see today, as houses consolidate and (editorial) heads roll. So, while a year ago it still seemed timely, now it seems a bit quaint. (It was originally published in the American Scholar six or eight years ago.) --tim