The prince's ghost

May 9, 2023 8:02 AM

Thoughts from the ghostwriter of Prince Harry's memoir "Spare."
posted by PussKillian (37 comments total)

Interesting. Reading 'Spare', I was certain that there was a ghostwriter behind it, and a very good one. The details were obviously all from Harry (and there were a lot of details*), but fashioning that into a readable narrative required a professional writer (which Harry isn't). 'Spare' was certainly one of the better books of this sort I've read.

(*A lot of details, but for a Tell All, Harry doesn't actually say that much. There are many instances in the book where he withholds the key. Maybe that was Harry, or his Ghost, or editors, or legal, or or or...)
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:17 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think it's safe to assume that nearly every celebrity memoir is assisted by a ghostwriter. Harry apparently acknowledged & thanked his ghostwriter at length, it's never really a big secret.
posted by muddgirl at 8:27 AM on May 9, 2023 [14 favorites]

Yeah, anyone who's not a professional writer before they start their memoir is doing it via ghost. The exceptions are so notable that "I wrote this without a ghostwriter!" becomes part of the story of the memoir itself. And about half the time that's a lie anyway and/or the publishing house did so much work on the "manuscript" that they might as well have ghostwritten it anyway.
posted by Etrigan at 8:33 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

I feel like maybe Russell Brand didn’t use a ghost writer? It was super unsanitized and sounded just like him talking. It was also completely surprising, not one of the genre of ‘here are a bunch of stories about me and my famous friends doing things’. I think we can also count on Stephen Fry and Ethan Hawke writing their own books, although of course Hawke is a novelist.
posted by bq at 8:48 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

There's no realistic way that Harry could have written a memoir without a ghostwriter, he is not a professional writer and doesn't have the level of skill needed to do that. Much as the ghostwriter in question can't play tennis professionally or pilot a military helicopter. But it absolutely wasn't a secret that he had one. In fact, a number of the comment pieces ahead of time suggested that they thought it ought to be well written given the calibre of the ghostwriter.

What I found fascinating in the article was that the ghostwriter didn't realise what the reception in the UK would be like, whereas I thought it was eminently predictable (and so probably did Harry). I guess they really don't make journalists like British tabloid journalists.
posted by plonkee at 8:50 AM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

I haven't read the book outside of excerpts, but one bit that I was certain really captured Harry's voice was a bit where he quoted Faulkner and then said immediately, "who the fook is Faulkner?" The rhythm of a real conversation, there. Plus, as a Mississippian, I found it a particularly hilarious reminder of how alien a person this man really is. (I mean, you know who Faulkner is, it's like knowing who Elvis is, nothing to do with reading him, but imagine thinking it's ridiculous to know --)

I ghostwrite -- not for celebrities, of course -- and I don't often see an account that's not business-oriented or bitter in some fashion. Like the woman whose children's book won an award for a pop star, who slapped her when she saw her handle the award. No name, but I have my guesses, Madge. And of course the poor bastard who wrote Trump's Art of the Deal.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:53 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]

I feel like maybe Russell Brand didn’t use a ghost writer? It was super unsanitized and sounded just like him talking.

The official story is that he started with a ghostwriter but didn't like what they drafted. I don't think it would be so very hard to write it to sound like him, particularly if he's collaborating on it.
posted by plonkee at 8:54 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

For anybody who knows the whole situation better, how much was "never complain, never explain" responsible for creating the particularly ravenous UK tabloid press?
posted by clawsoon at 9:12 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

I liked this: "If you don’t speak your emotions you serve them, and if you don’t tell your story you lose it—or, what might be worse, you get lost inside it. Telling is how we cement details, preserve continuity, stay sane. We say ourselves into being every day, or else."
posted by rory at 9:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [18 favorites]

Thanks for posting this article. I really enjoyed reading it, and it wasn't anything like what I thought it would be when I went into it. Great post!
posted by hippybear at 9:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah, this was a really interesting read! Peppered with evocative lines in a way that never felt pretentious.
posted by solotoro at 9:42 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yes, thank you for posting this. If you're sick of Royal Family coverage, it's still worth a read - this is only tangentially about Prince Harry and far more about the ghostwriting process and the unique relationship between a "ghost" and their subject.
posted by fortitude25 at 9:49 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]

100% agreed. Great read. I feel happy for Harry that he got some long-needed catharsis and was able to set the record straight to some degree. And what a fascinating profession Moehringer got himself into.
posted by heyho at 9:50 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

... he absolutely may not describe an interesting bowel movement he experienced years ago, as I once had to tell an author.

That quote will stay with me.
posted by scruss at 9:56 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

"... he absolutely may not describe an interesting bowel movement he experienced years ago, as I once had to tell an author.

That quote will stay with me.

Try drinking some coffee.
posted by Etrigan at 10:31 AM on May 9, 2023 [11 favorites]

Very interesting profile of a ghostwriter.
posted by doctornemo at 10:37 AM on May 9, 2023

I liked how he couldn't help throwing in "my dinner with Andre" when talking about Agassi.
posted by zsazsa at 10:44 AM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

I am now wondering what the comeback was that Harry threw at the soldiers that the ghostwriter thought should be excised. "Oh, yeah, well, your mother had to WORK for a living!"
posted by dannyboybell at 11:57 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

I have very little interest in the Royals in general, but somehow I found myself listening to the audio version of this book, read by the man himself. It was a great testimony to the skill of the ghostwriter that it came across as authentic as well as coherent. It really did feel like you were getting the inside scoop.
posted by rpfields at 12:40 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

I gave everything I had to that novel, but when it was published, in 2012, it got mauled by an influential critic. The review was then instantly tweeted by countless humanitarians, often with sidesplitting commentary like “Ouch.” I was on book tour at the time and read the review in a pitch-dark hotel room knowing full well what it meant: the book was stillborn. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand. Part of me wanted to never leave that room. Part of me never did.

For anyone else curious, I found the review in question.
posted by ZaphodB at 1:01 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

For anybody who knows the whole situation better, how much was "never complain, never explain" responsible for creating the particularly ravenous UK tabloid press?

Not really. They're horrifically ravenous to more than just the Royals. The phone hacking scandal (current civil case by Harry) came to light because Prince William realised that the only way a story could have run about an injury he had was if his voicemail had been hacked. He reported it to Scotland Yard. It turns out that they had also hacked the voicemail of possibly hundreds of other people, including a murdered school girl, leading her family to believe that she might still be alive.

The tabloids probably turned on the establishment in the early 1960s during the Profumo scandal (a government minister and Russian spy had the same lover). What's driven the approach to Royal coverage was firstly Diana and Sarah Ferguson's relativel youth and popularity and then even more importantly, the "War of the Waleses" from the early 1990s when both Charles and Diana encouraged tabloid dirt digging on each other.

There's nothing inherently wrong with "never complain, never explain" as a tactic. But those haven't been their media tactics for a while now. In particular, the Royals will rebut any story which has been placed by a PR agency with a false claim of royal patronage. For example, a story that Kate uses botox will be ignored, but a story that she uses company X botox will be rebutted. (Presumably any actual botox use is subject to an NDA.) They will rebut some other kinds of stories too. However, the experiences Harry relates in his memoir demonstrate that trying to comprehensively rebut everything will just lead to crying staff - it's a hideous multiplying whack-a-mole of stories. So, instead of rebutting as much as possible the Royals try and openly place positive coverage in more sympathetic outlets (magazines, tv, very occasionally broadsheets) and use social media.

The tabloids are ravenous because they have a very high circulation given the population size, and to maintain that, they were doing clickbait before the internet, and because TV and radio content is regulated whereas newspaper content is self-policed. Tabloid newspapers are also arguably still more politically influential than any other outlet.
posted by plonkee at 1:06 PM on May 9, 2023 [11 favorites]

Really interesting article. I've often wondered what the ghostwriting process was like.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:14 PM on May 9, 2023

Jennie Erdal wrote a good book about being a ghostwriter - Ghosting. And her obit here.
posted by paduasoy at 1:37 PM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

And thanks for the post! Found it interesting.
posted by paduasoy at 1:39 PM on May 9, 2023

For anyone else curious, I found the review in question.

That is not fun to read.

I once had a client who was called, by the New York Times, on the release of his book, a jackass. Literally called a jackass in a front page review of the Book Review.
posted by bq at 3:25 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

Never complain or explain is a nice philosophy that should work. It seems to work for Beyonce and Jay Z, who have not done real interviews in at least a decade.

The problem is when allegedly, one side of your family doesn't mind leaking crap about you, in order to deflect from other relatives' affairs, questionable spending, or criminal friends. For years.

Yes, I am describing multiple royals who have probably done this to Harry and then his own family for years. I'm not really interested in either part of the families but this specific complaint struck me as true as they went on their promo tours after fleeing the UK.


Fun fact about celeb writing: if it is not a kids book or they're not an actual novelist, they didn't write it. Writing at length is a skill the average person can't conjure up.

I like when a celeb is interviewed and they look confused about an anecdote and say something like, "I didn't realize that story was in there!"
posted by Freecola at 3:56 PM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Writing at length is a skill the average person can't conjure up.

I guess I'm slightly disconnected from reality because writing at length is a thing that sort of is a thing that I can do? Like yes I have to edit but I can just do this thing. I guess others can't, but that's something I have a hard time relating to. Opportunity for grown, I guess.
posted by hippybear at 4:03 PM on May 9, 2023

Everyone thinks they have it in them until they actually try to do it. Even then, the illusion might persevere until someone actually tries to read it.
posted by klanawa at 4:25 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

Everyone thinks they have it in them until they actually try to do it.

Yeah, it's apparently not a skill everyone has. Hell, I've worked with editing with people who can't even keep a verb tense straight across an entire sentence, let alone hold a tone across several paragraphs or even chapters. I just had an education that fed into me perfectly with a lot of peers that were also responding to the same teachers so it felt like everyone could do it, when it was really just my peer group. And even out of those, I don't think most of them kept up with being able to write beyond the time they were being graded on that.
posted by hippybear at 4:41 PM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I once spoke to a carpenter whose specialty was windows, installing them, restoring them, repairing them. He said; windows are easy: it's all right angles, anyone can do it who can use a measuring tape and a saw, if you can draw a rectangle, you can make a window. The trick is, though, cutting right every time, not wasting material, working fast and correctly, installing on time and to budget, knowing what's gone wrong when you look at it, all at the same time, are extremely difficult, and takes years of practice, and if you can't do it day in, day out, you'll make windows, but you're not going to make a living.

To me that's very similar to writing.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:26 PM on May 9, 2023 [19 favorites]

I read this and the article about E Jean Carroll in quick succession, and both talk about how slippery memory is, even for events that seem like they should be huge and memorable in our lives and that point really resonated for me. Some years ago, I had a very bad week, in which my car was smashed up while it was parked at a metafilter meetup, I was robbed in my own home by two men and I got stopped by the cops for driving in the carpool lane. The events, I remember - though with how much accuracy I couldn't say - but the only way I can narrow down what year those things happened in is by searching the MetaTalk archives for the discussion of the meetup.

If was 2005, apparently.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:34 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

This is why you need to write stuff down as soon as you can after it happens.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:43 PM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I work in public relations, and so writing is one of my core skills. I can write an op ed, a speech, a report etc and I'm good but not amazing at it. I'm not convinced I could write a book.
posted by plonkee at 5:23 AM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

That was great.
posted by lokta at 5:45 AM on May 10, 2023

I ghost-wrote a memoir a while back, and can attest it mixes all the challenges of writing with the complexities of navigating an intense, albeit temporary relationship. The experience was night and day from writing my own memoir. Finding and pushing your own discomfort limits is very different from helping someone else find theirs.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:16 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

(And speaking of difficult reviews, the Washington Post gave my own a loved-this-part, hated-this-part writeup that left me with quite mixed feelings.)
posted by gottabefunky at 10:18 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

At least the Times liked Moehringer's own memoir.

Kid's the best memoirist of his kind since Mary Karr wrote "The Liars' Club." Kid's book is a doozy.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:21 AM on May 10, 2023