Dodgy authors

The regular controversy over whether famous books should be withdrawn or boycotted because of the author's question-able behaviour is once more in the news because publishers are increasingly putting morality clauses into their contracts.

Which makes me ask myself if I should be taking the same censorious attitude and weeding from my bookshelves all those authors whose personal lives are or were reprehensible.

Should I throw out anyone guilty of sexual misconduct or violence? Anyone using pornography or prostitutes? Anyone who has made racist or homophobic remarks? Anyone who supports extreme right-wing groups?

It's a difficult question. I wouldn't want famous books with a huge literary reputation to disappear forever simply because the author's personal behaviour is outrageous. I don't see what's wrong with praising the book while at the same time condemning the way they behave.

But then again, isn't that tantamount to saying the author's personal life doesn't really matter because they're a literary genius and their appalling behaviour can be swept under the carpet? That brilliant turns of phrase are more important than a battered wife?

There's a difference of course between living authors who we're judging by current norms and long-dead authors whose behaviour seems dreadful now but was probably less contentious at the time. Why should they be judged against today's more rigorous standards? It would be absurd to banish Dickens or Shakespeare or Tolstoy.

I don't intend to remove books from my bookshelves, books that I greatly enjoyed and may have re-read several times, because of the author's squalid behaviour. How many authors are beyond reproach in their personal lives? Not many, I suspect.

I'm very torn between strict censorship and a more pragmatic approach. Especially as censorship can all too easily escalate.

Pic: Lionel Shriver, who has been criticised for her views on diversity (Shriver herself says she has been "maliciously misinterpreted")
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Was in Cambridge yesterday (Tuesday) for my mum's cremation. Very simple, no service or tributes, just the coffin being dispatched, as my mum wanted. My niece and I were both crying copiously, the first time I've cried for a very long time. The coffin really brings it home that this is the end.

Ghost writers

Apparently it’s getting quite common for well-known authors to farm out the writing process to other people and avoid the gruelling ordeal of actually producing a book. Quite often the ghost writer’s name is not even on the book so the public has no idea they’re being cheated.

It’s claimed that all crime writer James Patterson does is send four line chapter summaries to a co-writer who then fleshes them out into a complete book. Which is how he managed to publish 14 new titles in one year.

Personally I wouldn’t read a book that I knew was largely written by someone else. It’s that particular author‘s style and flavour I appreciate and I wouldn’t want to read another writer’s probably inferior attempts at copying it.

Though if the author’s writing style was so prosaic and run-of-the-mill that any halfway competent writer could copy it slickly enough to fool the public, I wouldn’t want to read it in the first place. I would stick to someone original enough that any cheap imitation simply wouldn’t be convincing.

I also think that if a ghost writer is being used, not only should they be credited on the cover of the book but it should be made clear just how much of the book they’re responsible for. To deliberately pass off a book as entirely the work of someone who has merely produced a plot outline is outrageous.

I also wonder why on earth someone like James Patterson needs to resort to such subterfuge when he is said to earn around $94 million a year. If he’s tired of writing, why doesn’t he just retire gracefully and do something more enjoyable with his time?

Of course any author with any integrity would throw their hands up in horror at the idea of hiring a ghostwriter, and would never ever hand over the writing to another person. They‘re far too protective of their own individual style to entrust it to anyone else, however talented they may be.

There is absolutely no truth in the rumour that Nickhereandnow is written entirely by a team of unpaid teenage interns based in an ugly office block in Chipping Norton. I can’t understand where such vicious smears come from. I can assure you this tedious rubbish is entirely my own work from start to finish.

My thanks to Genevieve Hassan of the BBC, whose article this post is indebted to.