{"id":5056,"date":"2021-01-30T14:00:08","date_gmt":"2021-01-30T20:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=5056"},"modified":"2021-01-30T14:44:34","modified_gmt":"2021-01-30T20:44:34","slug":"late-new-yorker-writer-called-updike-the-last-of-his-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2021\/01\/30\/late-new-yorker-writer-called-updike-the-last-of-his-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"Late New Yorker writer called Updike the last of his kind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2021\/01\/Screen-Shot-2021-01-30-at-1.05.31-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-5057\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2021\/01\/Screen-Shot-2021-01-30-at-1.05.31-PM-254x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2021\/01\/Screen-Shot-2021-01-30-at-1.05.31-PM-254x300.png 254w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2021\/01\/Screen-Shot-2021-01-30-at-1.05.31-PM.png 285w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 254px) 100vw, 254px\" \/><\/a>New Yorker<\/em> writer <strong>Ved Mehta<\/strong> died on January 9, 2021 at the age of 86, a venerable writer who became an American citizen in 1975 and whose opus magnum was an 11-volume autobiography. He was a meticulous wordsmith (each <em>New Yorker<\/em> piece was read 16 times) who, according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalheraldindia.com\/obituary\/ved-mehta-the-writer-who-was-blind\"><em>National Herald<\/em> (India) obituary<\/a>, would work on close to a hundred drafts of every chapter before sending it off to the publisher.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now people don&#8217;t know how to write letters,&#8221; he once complained. &#8220;I think hardly anyone writes formal prose these days. John Updike was the last writer I know who wrote formal prose. By formal prose I mean writing that is elegant, precise, clear. Now the writing has become quite a bit like schoolgirls writing to their mums\u2014letters about what&#8217;s going on in their schools. It&#8217;s different,&#8221; the obituary quoted him as saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Yorker writer Ved Mehta died on January 9, 2021 at the age of 86, a venerable writer who became an American citizen in 1975 and whose opus magnum was an 11-volume autobiography. He was a meticulous wordsmith (each New &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2021\/01\/30\/late-new-yorker-writer-called-updike-the-last-of-his-kind\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updike-in-context"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5056"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5065,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056\/revisions\/5065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}