This ghost writer policy was employed very successfully by
Alexandre Dumas pere who set up the first novel factory in
Paris at the end of the 19th Century. He would plot novels
and hire young writers to write them out under his name. At
least one of his ghostwriters sued him for proceeds but lost
in court because Dumas was an icon and the ghostwriter was
totally unaccomplished. In the late 20th Century, the
National Book Award winner, Jerzy Kosinski, was accused by
the venerable Village Voice, NYC's tabloid, of plotting
novels and employing writers to write them. There is a
distinct difference in style between his earlier work: The
Painted Bird, Steps, The Devil Tree, Being There, and his
later work, Cockpit & Blind Date, Passion Play, and
Pinball. His last work, Hermit of 72nd St I think it was
called, was both long, his other are quite short, and an even
more distinctly different style of writing. On the other
hand, Kosinski spoke at least 3 languages but wrote only in
English. He taught himself English writing the Painted Bird,
(which won the National Book Award) and it may just be that
his interest in language evolved dramatically during his
career so as to seem as though written by a different person.
The Village Voice, however, was adament that he was not
writing those books. It was a huge scandal at the time as
Kosinski was one of the most respected writers living in
America. I don't believe they ever got any ghostwriter to
turn on Kosinski, though.
Patrick King
---
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net wrote:
> In an article speculating on whether or not
Donald
> Bain had ghostwritten
> Margaret Truman's novels
> (www.weeklystandard.com/Content/
> Public/Articles/000/000/001/886tuxmk.asp), Jon
L
> Breen wrote:
>
> "Employing a ghostwriter on a work of fiction
is
> never more dubious than
> when the putative author really is a writer.
Brett
> Halliday (creator of
> Mike Shayne), Leslie Charteris (creator of
the
> Saint), and Ernest
> Tidyman (creator of Shaft) all turned to ghosts
to
> carry on the exploits
> of their famous characters."
>
> How many Shaft novels were there? I have
three:
> Shaft, Shaft Amongst
> the Jews and Shaft's Big Score. All three
are
> credited to Tidyman,
> though only the first two are copyrighted by
him.
> The third is
> copyrighted by the studio that made the film of
that
> title. I'm
> guessing that means it was a novelization,
perhaps
> (probably?) not by
> Tidyman.
>
> Also, I haven't read any of these. Are they
any
> good?
>
> Mark
>
>
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