>>FEATURE
GHOSTING: A DOUBLE LIFE
Jennie Erdal
Doubleday, 288 pp.
Ghostwriting, despite its spooky moniker, is more commonplace than we realize, and can be found in ads, instructions, political speeches, even journalism. But would you write a book and let someone else put his name on it?
Jennie Erdal did – and did it a number of times, authoring novels, works of non-fiction and even a widely syndicated newspaper column over a period of years for a wealthy and noted U.K. publisher.
Eventually the collusion between the two ended, and Erdal wrote her new memoir, Ghosting. It’s the first work she’s written to appear under her own name.
"I’m not trying to explain or apologize," says Erdal of the motivation behind her book. "I do feel that I have to give reasons why it lasted as long as it did." Her job was to realize the literary ambitions of her publisher, "Tiger" – his pseudonym in the book. The works mainly drew upon his two favourite delights – women and sex – and he referred to it as "their" work, as if she was there merely to corral his brilliance into something resembling a proper shape. It was a confusing task, writing imaginatively while also trying to imagine what someone else would write.
"When I had to write the novels, or when he decided he wanted to become a novelist, it was a scary business," says Erdal. "You don’t have anything to say to fill the pages." In order to come up with something, Erdal channelled her own fears and preoccupations (including a painful divorce) into the fiction. Tiger ultimately wanted his sex, though, and Erdal writes hilariously of the squeamish confusion involved in trying to bring his vaguely conceived ideas into being, including one bizarre notion involving two young female cousins able to have simultaneous orgasms – on opposite sides of the globe, no less.
The memoir isn’t an act of revenge. Tiger appears in his grandiose splendour, pompous and propelled by his own sense of unassailable purpose, but Erdal has managed to create a human portrait.
"He was maddening, infuriating – but I liked the guy," she admits. "As I say in the book, his facts are tangled up with his virtues." Erdal’s role as ghostwriter had been exposed years before she wrote her book. As well, the real Tiger has just finished publishing the second of a series of memoirs – "Nothing like what happened," says Erdal. "It’s pitiful in a way, but not a surprise, in knowing who he is."
Much of Ghosting’s psychology draws on Erdal’s childhood reverence for the power of words and language, and her time spent as a translator. "Editing is like translating – you do a kind of disappearing act, which is where I prefer to be. I think it’s much better to be in the shadows," she says.
Originally, Erdal began to write a novel based on her experiences, until she realized that the real story was bizarre enough. "I don’t think there is a rigid division between (factual) narrative and fiction," she says. "What I tried to do was not to spare myself from the truth."
When asked about the works that she wrote for Tiger, Erdal responds two ways. "Sometimes I blush – I think I was desperate at the time. Usually, though, what comes back is a feeling. When I left, I thought of myself for a long time as a recovering ghost," she says. "Without the ‘apprenticeship,’ I wouldn’t have become the writer I am." |
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