Sir or madam, won't you read my book?

A lot of people buy books because they bear the bylines of famous people. Secrets of My Success by some 'captain of industry' or a cookbook by a glamorous movie star. And then there are the autobiographies, the 'tell-alls' full of insider revelations. Great is the appreciation of the masses – and even greater the disappointment when somebody whispers, 'But they didn't really write that. They employed, gasp, a ghostwriter!'

Well, duh. How do you expect books like that get written? Do you imagine that a businessperson whose best friend is their electronic organiser has the time to sit in front of a computer screen and mull over the next mot juste as they unwind their tale? Pah. They have people for that. And why would you expect of a person who's very, very good, no doubt, at the thing that got them recognised, that they be equally good at writing?

Oh, yeah, I forgot. Now that Word exists, and Spellcheck, everybody's a writer. There's nothing to it, right? It's all about what you want to say and never, ever, about how you say it. Sure. Tell me about it.

I'm not saying that generals, world leaders, actors, sports figures, and whatnots can't write. Especially the whatnots. Winston Churchill did most of his own writing – after all, he was a journalist once upon a time. Two presidents of the US have been pretty good writers: Theodore Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter. Roosevelt could be scathing as an art critic, and whatever you think of Mr Carter's poetry, he's a good storyteller.

I've read some books by non-professional writers that amazed me. Mariette Hartley's Breaking the Silence is a great story and well-told. Even if you've never heard of this actress and couldn't care less about her life, you ought to read it if you're at all interested in 20th-century psychology. Her grandfather was John B Watson, the father of behaviourism. According to Hartley, Watson's theories about child-raising led to some serious problems in her life.

Another actor whose book I heartily recommend is Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek). His Fan Fiction is a wild mix of fiction and autobiography that should be appreciated by fans of the well-known series as well as readers who enjoy a good postmodern romp. It's well-written and, in places, moving as well as funny.

However, it remains the rule that busy people don't have time to do their own writing. And musicians, actors, politicians, physicists, and the aftermentioned whatnots only rarely have the necessary writing skills to get their stories across. That's where the ghostwriters come in.

Ghostwriters can be completely anonymous or get billing under an 'as told to' label. They can be writers you've never heard of because ghostwriting is their specialty and discretion their motto. Alternatively, they can be well-known writers in their own right¹.

Some famous figures are quite open as to exactly who helped them with their memoir. Others will swear up and down that they wrote it, even when everybody knows they're incapable of it. Some ghostwriting jobs are well-known. Others may be a surprise. Try out this pop quiz for fun.

Pop Quiz

1. Who wrote Imprisoned with the Pharaohs 'by' Harry Houdini?
2. It is well-known that the complete autobiography of Mark Twain wasn't published until 2010. But whose autobiography did Mark Twain help write?
3. Who wrote Astrology: Your Place in the Sun 'by' celebrity astrologer Evangeline Adams, published in 1928?
4. To no one's surprise at all, Ronald Reagan's 1990 bestselling autobiography was written by someone else, a guy named Robert Lindsay. What kind of books did Lindsay usually write?
5. If you were a child in the US in the early 1960s, you couldn't escape knowing about President John F Kennedy's famous book Profiles in Courage. It was practically required reading. But who really wrote it?

Do people really think that a person who can barely string three words together in public would be able to write a well-organised, vivid, insightful account of events? Oh, who am I kidding? Everybody and his kid sister privately thinks that they could write the Great Earth Novel if only they had the time. If only they weren't so busy being fabulous in some other way.

Vanity, thy name is human.

Another autobiography that I'm pretty sure is un-ghost-written is Just One More Thing by Peter Falk. He was a very creative man and perfectly capable of writing (and illustrating) his own book. I recommend it as a good read, whether or not you're a fan of the 'Columbo' series. It's worth it as a fun trip through some history and around the world.

Of course, it's better if people can do their own memoir-writing. A good ghostwriter will clean up the 'problematic' bits and put a better spin on things. A ghostwriter will also, almost inevitably, alter the tone of the narrative. Even a gifted ghostwriter can't give you the full flavour of someone else's thoughts. But then, an awkwardly-written memoir can keep you from hearing those thoughts at all. As my beloved piano teacher and mentor, Miss Lindquist, used to say, 'You pays your money and you takes your choice.' There you have it: wisdom from the late 19th Century, passed down to you in the 21st courtesy of the internet.

And now I've dithered long enough to separate the quiz from the answers. Take a look and see how well you guessed.

Answers

1. Who wrote Imprisoned with the Pharaohs 'by' Harry Houdini?
   

   HP Lovecraft. And no, the author didn't believe Houdini's tale, either. Stop and think about it: the guy who came up with Cthulhu didn't believe this stuff.

2. It is well-known that the complete autobiography of Mark Twain wasn't published until 2010. But whose autobiography did Mark Twain help write?
   

   Ulysses S Grant's. Twain admired the retired general and former president. He knew that Grant was dying and wanted to leave something to support his family. Twain helped the book become a bestseller.

3. Who wrote Astrology: Your Place in the Sun 'by' celebrity astrologer Evangeline Adams, published in 1928?
   

   Aleister Crowley. Yep, the ol' Beast 666 himself. Ms Adams wasn't a really good astrologer: she predicted that the stock market would do well in 1929.

4. To no one's surprise at all, Ronald Reagan's 1990 bestselling autobiography was written by someone else, a guy named Robert Lindsay. What kind of books did Lindsay usually write?
   

   True crime novels. You can't make this stuff up.

5. If you were a child in the US in the early 1960s, you couldn't escape knowing about President John F Kennedy's famous book Profiles in Courage. It was practically required reading. But who really wrote it?
   

   His speechwriter, lawyer and author Ted Sorensen. Kennedy called Sorensen his 'intellectual blood bank'.

Have a good week. Go read some autobiographical prose, ghostwritten or not.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

27.03.23 Front Page

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