Sonny Mehta, the editor in chief of Knopf and chairman of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, died yesterday. A publishing legend, Mehta worked with a number of authors who went on to win the Nobel Prize: Kazuo Ishiguro, Alice Munro, Orhan Pamuk, Imre Kertész, V. S. Naipaul, and Toni Morrison. Other authors he worked with include: Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, John Banville, Julian Barnes, Anne Carson, Ted Chiang, Michael Crichton, Edwidge Danticat, Katherine Dunn, James Ellroy, Nathan Englander, Richard Flanagan, Yaa Gyasi, Carl Hiaasen, P. D. James, Jhumpa Lahiri, Stieg Larsson, Emily St. John Mandel, Gabriel García Márquez, Cormac McCarthy, Lorrie Moore, Haruki Murakami, Jo Nesbø, Sharon Olds, Michael Ondaatje, Tommy Orange, Anne Rice, Karen Russell, Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, John Updike, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Robert Gates, Oliver Sacks, Patti Smith, Cheryl Strayed... The list goes on. In a press release, Knopf states: “Mehta’s contributions to the world of letters and publishing are without precedent. His exacting standards—in editorial, production, design, marketing, and publicity—were a beacon to the book industry and beyond. He was a friend to writers, editors, and booksellers around the world. Mehta was also a gentleman, uniquely so, who cared deeply about his colleagues and the work with which he entrusted them. He was a beloved figure at Knopf, working at the only career he ever wanted. He lived a life in books, of books, and for books and writers.”
At the New Yorker, Deborah Treisman talks to 99 Nights in Logar author Jamil Jan Kochai about video games, Afghanistan, and the struggle to connect with family. “Connection, in general, can be an impossible goal, but the children of refugees trying to reach a point of understanding with their parents often have to deal with additional forms of disconnect—the loss of language, the weight of guilt, the shame of difference, the pressures of societal discrimination, and memories of incomprehensible trauma,” he said. “It can be daunting.”
After purchasing New York Media, Vox Media says they have 125 million readers per month across the company’s many editorial properties.
“For those who wondered if Mr. Trump might heed the concerns of historians and First Amendment advocates — who say his actions have eroded public trust in journalism, and perhaps the very concept of empirical facts — 2019 provided a grim answer,” writes the Times’s Michael Grynbaum. “Once a global champion for the free press, the presidency has become an inspiration to autocrats and dictators who ape Mr. Trump’s cry of ‘fake news.’”
At The Guardian, Sarah Ditum explains why everyone should read the books of late author Alasdair Gray. “Embedded in [his work] is a frightening kind of truth about how men see women,” she writes. “The broadly tedious genre of men interrogating masculinity has a long way to go before it catches up with Gray’s sharp eye on power and desire, his keen sense of the taboo on men confessing vulnerability.”
The New York Times looks at the recently-published journal article about the discovery of The Book of Two Ways, an ancient Egyptian guidebook to the afterlife. “Among other annoyances, the deceased had to contend with demons, scorching fire and armed doorkeepers, who protected the dead body of Osiris against gods bent on preventing his rebirth,” Franz Lidz writes. “Success in the afterlife required an aptitude for arcane theology, a command of potent resurrection spells and incantations and a knowledge of the names not just of Underworld doorkeepers but also of door bolts and floorboards.”
