overview
primers
& studies
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Guides:
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plagiarism
moral
rights
related
Profiles:
Essay Mills
Education
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primers
and studies
This page considers literature for and about ghostwriting.
It covers -
It
supplements the more detailed discussion of plagiarism
and moral
rights. It supplements an exploration of Essay
Mills.
 primers
Online and offline primers about ghostwriting (particularly
speechwriting) abound but are distinctly uneven and often
pitched towards the 'Dale Carnegie market'.
Alan Crofts authored Ghostwriting: A Writing Handbook
(London: Black 2004) and The Freelance Writer's Handbook
- How to make money and enjoy your life (London:
Piatkus 2002).
Other primers include Mahesh Grossman's Write a Book
Without Lifting a Finger: How to hire a Ghostwriter even
if you're on a shoestring budget (Chicago: Ten Finger
Press 2003) - we would respectfully suggest that there
is a need to lift at least a digit or two in dialing a
ghost - and Ghostwriting: How to Get into the Business
(New York: Paragon 1991) by Eva Shaw.
studies
Works regarding originality and authenticity are highlighted
here.
They include Roland Barthes' 1968 'The death of the author'
in Image Music Text (New York: Hill & Wang
1977) and Michel Foucault's 'What Is An Author?'
in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (thaca:
Cornell Uni Press 1977), Mark Rose' Authors &
Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Cambridge: Harvard
Uni Press 1993), Walter Benjamin's seminal 1936 'The Work
of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' and Bernard
Edelman's Ownership of the Image: Elements for a Marxist
Theory of Law (London: Routledge.
Eugen Garfield's perceptive Ghostwriting & Other
Essays: Essays of An Information Scientist (Philadelphia:
ISI Press 1986) retains its value. It might be supplemented
with Bruce Weber's Hired Pens: Professional Writers
in the Golden Age (Athens: Ohio Uni Press 1997),
Grub Street & the Ivory Tower: Literary Journalism
and Literary Scholarship from Fielding to the Internet
(New York: Oxford Uni Press 1998) edited by Jeremy Treglown
and Bette Pesetsky's witty novella Author From A Savage
People (New York: Knopf 1983). As a point of entry
into studies regarding ghosting of 'drug literature' see
Max Lagnado's 2003 paper
Professional writing assistance: effects on biomedical
publishing.
For moral rights see Jane
Ginsburg's The Author's Name as a Trademark: A Perverse
Perspective on the Moral Right of 'Paternity'? (PDF).
Koons and other appropriationists are explored in Art
in the Courtroom (New York: Praeger 1998) by Vilis
Inde; ironically Koons has sued for infringement of his
copyright and forgery.
For speechwriting see in particular Kathleen Jamieson's
Eloquence in an electronic age: The transformation
of political speechmaking (New York: Oxford Uni Press
1988), Carol Gelderman's All The President's Words:
The Bully Pulpit and the Creation of the Virtual Presidency
(New York: Walker 1997) and Presidential Speechwriting:
From the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution and Beyond
(College Station: Texas A&M Uni Press 2003) edited
by Kurt Ritter & Martin Medhurst.
Stratemeyer is examined in Carol Billman's The Secret
of the Stratemeyer Syndicate: Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys,
& the Million Dollar Fiction Factory (New York:
Ungar 1986) and Deidre Johnson's thinner Edward Stratemeyer
& the Stratemeyer Syndicate (New York: Twayne
1993) or Tom Swift & Friends (Jefferson:
McFarland 1982) by John Dizer. For an account by one of
the more prolific ghosts see The Ghost of the Hardy
Boys (London: Methuen 1976) by Leslie McFarlane,
aka Franklin W Dixon. The Nancy Drew phenomenon is explored
in Melanie Rehak's Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the
Women Who Created Her (New York: Harcourt 2005).
Memoirs by non-political ghostwriters are rare. A recent
example is Jennie Erdal's Ghosting (London: Canongate
2005) - about 15 years of writing books, articles and
speeches for the UK businessman and publisher Naim Attallah.
For speechwriting see Recollections of a Bleeding
Heart (Sydney: Knopf 2003) by Keating aide Don Watson,
What I Saw at the Revolution : A Political Life in
the Reagan Era (New York: Random House 1990) by Peggy
Noonan and A View from the Wings (London: Orion
2003) by Ronald Millar.
The outstanding account of corporate ghosting is A
Ghost's Memoir: The Making of Alfred P. Sloan's My Years
with General Motors (Cambridge: MIT Press 2002) by
John McDonald. A view of celebrity ghosting is provided
in Donald Bain's Every Midget Has an Uncle Sam Costume:
Writing for a Living (Fort Lee: Barricade 2002).
Churchill's use of ghosts is discussed in David Reynolds's
In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing
the Second World War (New York: Random House 2005).
For earlier periods see Leslie McFarlane's The Ghost
of the Hardy Boys (Toronto: Methuen
1976) and Roger Garis' My Father Was Uncle Wiggily
(New York: McGraw-Hill 1966).
Grub Street - quills for hire - is explored in Paula McDowell's
The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics and Gender
in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678-1730 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press 1998), Pat Rogers' Grub Street: Studies
in a Subculture (London:Methuen 1972), Elizabeth
Eisenstein's Grub Street Abroad: Aspects of the French
Cosmopolitan Press from the Age of Louis XIV to the French
Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992), by Mark
Rose's Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright
(Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1993) and Paula Hesse's
cogent The Rise of Intellectual Property (PDF).
For legal ghosting - why else did God make new law graduates
- see hh 2004 Unbundling Legal Services: The Ethics
of 'Ghostwriting' Pleadings for Pro Se Litigants
(PDF).
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