GHOST WRITER = WRITER
What’s the difference between ghost writing and plagiarism?
There were two recalibrations in the 1990s that felt like turning points. One was the recalibration of SAP test scores (they raised the mean to the median). The other is when publishing renamed biographies “memoirs” so they could book the celebrity, politician, and self-nicknamed Thought Leader on talk shows and interviews. Most famous subjects do not write their books. Most.
As part of this reframing, the writer is demoted and referred to by the qualified term “ghost writer,” if they are credited at all. The subject of the biography is called the writer. This isn’t plagiarism and dishonesty, somehow. (You’re thinking of when students do it.)
Of course a politician (or celebrity, or the corporate dipshit who doesn’t even write his own emails and PowerPoint presentations) didn’t make time to write their own book, except in three cases that I know of, the stuff of pleasant surprise for, and legendary lore from, their publishers and editors. Three I know of who wrote their books: two politicians and one celebrity. They must grind their teeth to dust watching others get out there and perform As Authors on interviews and podcasts.
I ghost wrote a book. I was hired to copyedit a vocabulary book for a test-prep company: 200 SAT words, definitions that had to be written not stolen, sample sentences to illustrate the meanings, and quizzes.
When we got the manuscript, I flagged a couple of problems: Despite the repeated reminders of details in his contract, the author had cribbed instead of written definitions. You can’t replicate more than 3 words in a row from another dictionary without its being theft, was the rule I’d been told to spot check.
OK, but how were his sentences? You tell me:
“Boris was gregarious.”
“Cindy was obstreperous.”
“Melanie was incensed that Vlad was cantankerous.”
Shit. That won’t do.
The executive editor asked me to rewrite “anything that looked fucked up.” OK, so that means every definition and every sample sentence. And, because I was very young and grateful for work, I did it. I have mixed feelings about it: On the one hand, fuck the fake writer who then used that book to get three more book contracts through another test-prep company; and on the other hand, fuck me for Ship of Theseus–rewriting a book over a sleepless weekend for $11 an hour.
I think of that writer-who-wasn’t as a performer. He was playing Writer, and he pulled it off, with my help.
I have sympathy for writers who make their living as stunt writers. They make the most of this fucked up situation, and the work they do goes a long way to building their portfolio and chops and paying the bills. It’s a charade, a performance.
If (since) we can’t rely on publishing to be transparent and answer the question, “Who wrote this fucking book please?” then let’s commit to the bit. Cut publishing out of this production entirely and let’s Cyrano de Bergerac it for real: Decouple fake memoirs from publishing and treat them as not books but multimedia artifacts from the production companies mounting a touring production of “As the Author, starring….”
