The Silent Acumen of Sonny Mehta

Five Lessons from an Editing Legend

Editing Legends: Sonny Mehta

A New Series on the Greatest Editors in Book Publishing

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Self-help books are rightfully maligned. But when they’re not peddling dangerously bad advice or trying to rope you into a multi-level marketing scheme, I do find that self-help books have some value. They contain nuggets of wisdom, and usually they simply tell us what we already know and sometimes, if they catch us at the right moment, at the exactly time we need to hear it.

Editors often have to learn by helping themselves—editing is often called an apprenticeship job because editors learn by observing and then doing, not studying and then applying. But outside of the immediate mentors you work for or with, editors must grasp lessons from at the margins, hearing whispers of how other people do (or did) the job and collecting advice they find valuable.

There are some legends in the industry that are worth observing at a distance, sometimes through their written work on the subject of editing, sometimes just through their body of editorial work. And no editor looms larger over the late 20^th and early 21^st century than Knopf publisher Sonny Mehta, who died in 2019, helming America’s most lauded book publisher that went on an unprecedented run during his 30-year tenure that included (but was not limited to) publishing bestselling and award-winning authors like Kazuo Ishiguro, Donna Tartt, Toni Morrison, Carl Hiaasen, Cormac McCarthy, Michael Ondaatje, John le Carré, Gabriel García Márquez, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, and on and on and on.

There’s a good general biography included in this article if you don’t know who Mehta is, but I won’t bother rehashing those details. Instead let’s just dive into some observations, some self-help lessons I gleaned from watching and reading everything that I could find publicly available about him.

Lesson One: All About Reading

He was a complete publisher, eclectic in his tastes, ferocious in his will, guided by a mission to bring the finest books to Knopf and publish them only once editing had honed them to irreproachable form. Yet he wanted to be remembered above all as a reader.

Source: The New York Times, 2020

Unlike many other publishing legends — publishers, editors, agents —Mehta is fairly unique in that he left few of his own words behind. He didn’t leave letters behind like Maxwell Perkins did or write a memoir like his predecessor at Knopf Robert Gottlieb did. There are so few of his own words to judge him by — writings, interviews or speeches — and that’s not by accident. He was well-known for being able to hold a good silence (nearly every article and interview mention this without fail). But there’s also an admirable quality that comes across in all accounts of Mehta: he wasn’t a writer himself and he didn’t want to be a celebrity editor (“I keep think it’s misdirected when people want to talk to me about books, they should be talking to people who are writing them”). Instead, basically, all the man did was read and want to read and then go read some more.

In one of the two television interviews I could find with Mehta— on C-Span of all places — he claimed to have read about ten books a week (more than one a day). This seemed preposterous until I read a small tidbit in the most interesting article about Mehta I unearthed, a 1993 Esquire profile (it’s worth a read – despite where his career would end up, he was neither accepted nor popular when he first arrived to Knopf; he was, for all his Cambridge pedigree, an Indian man in a profoundly old-school white industry). The Esquire profile opens with Mehta waking up on Saturday sitting in a chair and listening to music while reading uninterrupted until 4pm. And he has the same plan for Sunday as well.

Sonny Mehta didn’t try to be or do everything. He focused on what was most important: reading. He had an unquestionably natural talent and taste for good books, but he also made sure that he had the deepest pool of books to pull from and judge against each other.

As a person who flits between hyper fixation (editing for hours on end) and a propensity to distraction (reading approximately 4-6 books at any given point; writing a newsletter), I probably do not have the brain chemistry to follow this advice. Yet the advice is still invaluable (maybe it just isn’t the right time for me): If you have the capacity, put your energy into the most important part of your job or your life.

Lesson Two: Quality Doesn’t Have a Genre

Here’s a piece of advice from observing Mehta’s career that I can and do follow, and think about often. It’s something I’ve commented on before when talking about Knopf’s success in Mehta’s heyday. It is the fact that the company that Mehta ran — about which newspapers often threw around words like “venerable” and “distinguished”— also published books that readers would consider down-market and commercial if they didn’t have the Knopf logo on them. From Fifty Shades of Grey to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to Toni Morrison, Knopf during Mehta’s reign covered everything. Once quoted as saying, “I still want us to publish the best books in every area”, Mehta acted upon this promise consistently publishing commercial bestsellers alongside literary bestsellers. He was a reader and wanted to reach as many readers as possible, but the real trick and what feels like minor magic is doing this all without compromising quality:

Carl Hiaasen said he was shocked when Mehta bought one of his first books. "I don't fit into any category,” Hiaasen said he told Metha. “That why I want to publish you,'” Mehta's replied. Mehta was at work editing his most recent work when he passed away, Hiaasen said.

Source: Publishers Weekly, 2020

Mehta, being British and working in Europe before he came to Knopf, had an extraordinary attention to international literature as well. This is no more evident than in his publishing of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, to which we owe the victory tour of this bestseller much of the public material we have on Mehta. But all of the articles and interviews are littered with references to what close attention he paid to the international community of writers and publishing. As one tribute noted: “His desk and tables always had piles of amazing discoveries he’d made—volumes slim and fat—from around the globe.”

The lesson that any editor, but really any person can take from Mehta’s example is that we shouldn’t get caught up in the knee-jerk perceptions of something (too trashy; too foreign; too pretentious) and instead focus on figuring out the reality of the situation (is it good?) and sticking to our convictions.

Lesson Three: The David Fincher Style isn’t the Only School of Perfection

David Fincher (The Social Network, Fight Club, Gone Girl) is one of those film directors known for his obsessiveness and perfectionism. Reportedly he filmed the opening scene of The Social Network 99 times, he famously did a hours long interview he didn’t want released because he thought he could do better. While Mehta clearly lived devoutly as a reader, there is no such genius-patina of Mehta as an editor in the public record. He didn’t cultivate the image of fighting over every comma and semicolon that many editors feel is necessary to keep up the mystique. Mehta doesn’t comment much (if at all) on the nuts and bolts of editing in his interviews even when asked directly.

Jordan Pavlin, then editorial director, now Publisher of Knopf said Mehta was:

The most efficient editor on the planet,” adding that one word from Mehta could cause a writer to frantically re-examine whatever Mehta had been critiquing.

Writer Omar El Akkad wrote about Mehta’s editing:

The best writing advice I’ve ever received came delivered from him in single sentences — simple yet deeply nuanced advice I would think about for months, each time arriving at the realization that what he suggested was exactly what the work needed. His gift, I think, was to read every manuscript twice at the same time — once for exactly what it was and once for everything it could be.

The lesson here is that you don’t have to be a Fincher style obsessive to do something at the highest level—Mehta was extremely successful as both an editor and publisher by getting the big decisions right. Foremost, choosing the right writers to work with and publish (from all that reading). And when he edited a book, he seemed to try to improve works by leaps, not baby steps (and, primarily, let those great writers he had signed up cook— he once held Douglas Adams hostage in a hotel room to make him write).

Lesson Four: No Editor (or Writer…or Agent…or Publisher) is an Island

In Mehta’s Charlie Rose interview (the other main and, frankly, best source we have for Mehta’s own words) put his greatest achievement as taking Cormac McCarthy from a writer’s writer to a household literary name.

Mehta on Charlie Rose - it must be said that he mastered the author-like, monochromatic-plus-cigarette look to match the best of the enigmatic authors.

But he didn’t achieve this alone. Cormac McCarthy. Murakami. Ishiguro. Bret Easton Ellis. Donna Tartt. Toni Morrison. All of these authors and others were sold to Mehta by legendary book agent Binky Urban. It’s no mistake that these two legends in publishing had overlapping tenures and did lots of business together. Editing and publishing is a business that requires symbiosis between the parties involved: the editor, the publisher, the agent, and, most importantly the author.

Among one of Mehta’s most famous early publishing coups was publishing American Psycho, which was highly controversial at the time (for what I hope are somewhat obvious reasons). Here’s how Urban describes the process after American Psycho’s original publisher got cold feet and canceled the book last minute:

I called Sonny Mehta and I said, “I don’t care what you pay for this book. But I think it should be published right away because it’s going to get a lot of press. Your imprimatur will help people understand what this is.” He said yes! And published it like a week later. It was really fun pulling that off.

Urban was not haggling for the best price and Mehta didn’t hesitate when someone he trusted with immense taste came to him with a great opportunity. From the outside (and many times on the inside) agents, editors, writers, and publishers can view their jobs as being in opposition to each other: each trying to extract the most from the other parties while doing the least. When in reality it’s much better for everyone if a fair deal is done. A true meeting of the minds like that between Urban and Mehta— everyone getting a fair deal and working in tandem to make the result more successful—is always stronger than Machiavellian plotting.

Lesson Five: Get Out and Enjoy It

While Mehta made sure to emphasize himself as a reader and others upon his death did the same, between the lines it was abundantly clear Mehta’s second most passionate pastime was shooting the shit with and entertaining writers. There’s a string of good remembrances in The New York Times, but we’ll have to return to Carl Hiaasen again for my favorite:

“I remember when I was finishing one of my novels he announced he was coming to South Beach to do the final edit face to face, which wasn’t our typical routine. I was worried that he didn’t like the final draft and wanted to tell me in person.

When I arrived at his hotel, I found the manuscript in neat little stacks all over Sonny’s room. We spent less than an hour going over his notes, and the rest of the night we hung out on Ocean Drive, eating and drinking. It was winter, and basically Sonny just wanted a fun trip to Florida. Looking back, I wish we’d done it that way on every novel.”

Yes, the guy sat in a chair alone and silently read for entire days at a time, but there are also numerous anecdotes of Mehta letting authors stay in his apartment, throwing literary parties, and generally going out and having a great time drinking, eating, and talking literature. For all the accolades and achievements one can rack up in a lifetime by practicing monastic devotion to a craft, Mehta proved that you can devote your life to one thing and also enjoy the hell out of it.

Key Sources

Charlie Rose Interview

C-Span Interview

Esquire Profile

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