Ghostwriters in the sky…
Perhaps you’re familiar with the Western song with a similar name, made popular by Marty Robbins, for example? While the song is about demons and salvation, I intend no demonizing here…well, maybe a bit for people who use ghostwriters and never acknowledge them. Writers trying to scratch out a living will do most anything from greeting card verses to entire books for big name celebrities who couldn’t write a complete sentence even if they tried. These are unsung heroes because they receive no accolades. Your marketers and editors are at least acknowledged in the writing business, but ghostwriters are like true phantoms.
We just learned, in fact, that ghost writing is not exclusive to the writing business. Japan, where personal honor is a national prerequisite and dishonor is historically often dealt with in violent fashion, just learned that their most famous classical composer, Mamoru Samuragochi, is a complete fake (I’m referring to a NY Times article). Not only did he pretend to be deaf—they called him the Japanese Beethoven—he paid Takashi Niigaki to write his music. What Mr. Samuragochi will do as a consequence is an open question, but I suspect that the Japanese response will be one of national shame. We Americans have something to learn from that culture.
In America, we have no shame. Politicians (I’ll refrain from naming names), sports figures (again, no names), and Hollywood stars (anyone with a book?) use ghostwriters. Whistleblowers’ stories, tell-all memoirs, and confessions of serial killers and drug addicts are often penned by ghostwriters. Some of the latter charge plenty, I suppose, but I see something wrong with readers who accept this slight-of-hand. Why should the person figuring as author get credit when all he or she does at best is hand over a pile of notes to the ghostwriter and tell him to make a book out of the chaos? Readers are either incredibly naïve or don’t have any shame.
Talk shows are even worse culprits. The faux-author often makes the rounds at them, plugging his or her book, with nary an acknowledgment or admission that he or she didn’t write a single word. In America, it doesn’t matter, as long as the confession, expose, or “autobiography” titillates the national psyche. These books are supermarket tabloids dressed up to look important, the emperor’s clothes in book form. And we devour them because they deal with celebrities.
The most egregious part of this national tale of shame is that publishers pander to this public addiction. The Big Five, in particular, feed off these books. Some are quite well written, of course—accolades to the ghostwriters! Others are boring, sappy, and insulting to one’s intelligence, as the ghostwriter and editors try to dumb the prose down so any simpleton can understand and experience vicarious pleasure in reading the drivel. I don’t know how many millions these books bring into the coffers of the Big Five, but I suspect any estimate I give will probably be too low. It’s a national disgrace.
The Japanese, on the other hand, are tiers above us. They love classical music. For years, I watched Ozawa conduct the Boston Symphony. His multinational rendering of the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth in a previous Olympics was an extravaganza, although lacking in finesse. For some reason, the European classical music tradition resonates with the good people of Japan, a cultural phenomenon I can’t get my head around. I’m sure some sociology dissertations have been written about it—if not, they should be! It’s on par but clearly much more sophisticated than France’s obsession with Jerry Lewis. Japan’s latest scandal will create more waves in that country than the tsunami, I’m sure, while we blithely accept that the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitarist at the Super Bowl wasn’t even plugged in!
Classical music in Japan is a national pastime as much as baseball is (the Yankees just spent millions “importing” the best Japanese pitcher—no shame there either). Not so much in the States—that is, not classical music. It’s become more of an old boys’ club, where professors of music squirreled away in our universities’ ivory towers write cerebral works for other professors and avant-garde conductors force the banshee-screaming schlock down our throats at our concert halls to “educate us” (James Levine, who followed Ozawa in Boston, practiced this). The Japanese do it right. They don’t pan the warhorses; they love them. They don’t pamper erudite schlockmeisters without any public following; if X composer writes schlock, the audience knows it and doesn’t accept it.
But back to ghostwriting. The Japanese treatment of classical music should set an example for Americans, but big money is involved. I don’t know about publishers in Japan, but the ones here all too often cater to schlockmeisters too. They’ll publish something like the Fifty Shades trilogy and hype it. They’ll also accept “authors” who never truly write anything because they use ghostwriters. I suppose you can argue that if people would stop reading these books, these “authors” would go away. That’s an indictment on the whole system, if true—for both “writers” and readers!
There’s a related phenomenon, a cold compared to the flu of people using ghostwriters. Established authors—those with an established brand name—retire from the business and let lesser known writers produce their works for them. This isn’t quite so bad as the people using ghostwriters because most of the time these lesser known writers are recognized, although their name often appears in small print. And then we have authors who make a deal with a dead author’s estate to continue writing “in the style” of the dead author—again, I won’t name names but just say these practices are questionable at best.
Of course, the sad part of this tragic tale is that greed is the determining factor. Somehow, we’ve lost the notion of art as a worthwhile creative activity that entertains a receptive and discerning public and hindering real writers who have great stories to relate. Are we dooming creative activity in America because we insist on dumbing down everything we create? Are we rewarding the schlockmeisters? Let me know what you think!
And so it goes….
