Believe in Ghosts
The chances are that by the end of the month you will have bought a hardback book by JR Moehringer. Even if you don’t purchase one, you’ll soon find it hard to avoid phrases by the American Pulitzer Prize-winner across all your media feeds. His book will become a worldwide blockbuster — one of the publishing sensations of the decade.
Yet few will even know his name. Why? Because JR Moehringer is the ghost-writer behind Prince Harry’s Spare, a book destined to appear at every Oxfam in the land in about two years’ time. Fresh from his successful ghosting of Andre Agassi’s autobiography, JR Moehringer was commissioned by Harry to tell his story. If asked what Harry’s outpourings mean, Moehringer will be able to answer, like Don McLean when asked about the meaning of American Pie: it means he never has to work again.
Ghost-writing is a spectral business. When we buy a book with a name on the cover, we are mostly expecting it is by that person. The reality is that many ‘authors’, especially those keen to cash on sudden celebrity or notoriety, have neither the inclination nor talent to write a book.
Writing a book is really hard. Orwell said ‘writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness’. Why suffer the disease yourself when you can pay someone else to take the pain? Most of the bestselling memoirs of politicians, footballers and singers are written by ghosts, who are decently-paid and hide in the shadows.
In the case of John F Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, the president was somewhat tied up in the US Senate. Fifty years later, the real author Ted Sorensen was gracious to suggest that Kennedy ‘helped choose the words of many of its sentences’ in the resulting Pulitzer Prize-winning tome.
The ghost-writer’s Bible (another ghost-written book) is Andrew Crofts’ Ghostwriting. This how-to guide provided the inspiration for Robert Harris’s The Ghost, a novel about the man hired to write the memoir of a thinly-veiled Tony Blair-like figure. Ironically, the real Blair was one of the few superstar autobiography-writers who actually wrote his own book. Crofts helpfully sets out the practical considerations and temperament of the potential ghost-writer:
- An ability to suppress their ego
- An ability to see the structure of a story from among seemingly random material
- The ability to ask the right questions
- The ability to see the world through other eyes
- The ability to listen and not judge, and to be interested in other people
- Trustworthiness
- An ability to write in other voices.
This presupposes the ability to write with flair, and perhaps also the saintly patience required to deal with high-profile figures talking about themselves at great length. Imagine having to listen to Prince Harry wanging on for hour after hour, even on the promise of a new beach house.
There’s nothing wrong with hiring a ghost. We should all be less squeamish. It saves time and effort. And the reading public (or at least the publisher’s editorial team) will be grateful for a professional turn of phrase, clear structure, narrative arc, and compelling storytelling, rather than the incoherent rubbish the ‘author’ would probably come up left to their own devices. Being able to score a penalty rarely translates into literary panache.
So good luck to JR Moehringer and I hope he enjoys his cash. The same goes for the writers behind Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Hilary Clinton’s memoir, Tom Clancy’s later novels, and Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal. Okay, maybe not that last one. Ghost-writing is a legitimate form of writing, with advantages for writer and reader alike. There’s no need to be afraid of ghosts.
Paul Richards is a writer-for-hire.
