Ghostwriter as Scurfy Recluse

Oh, the hubris of it all. In the very same week that the great Horace Bent celebrates the sex appeal of the ghostwriting fraternity in the equally great trade organ, The Bookseller, Terence Blacker writes in The Author that in publishing now scurfy recluses "put the words on paper", while well-scrubbed celebrities "appear on the cover and do the chat show circuit". From “sexy” to “scurfy”, how mortifying.

The eminent Blacker, however, goes on to provide a chink of light by predicting that within a year ghostwriters will be forming their own trade association, Ghostwriters of Britain (GOB), and will be powerful enough to “cripple the book trade for several months” by withdrawing their labour. The revenge of the scurfy recluses; it seems our day of power is nigh.

“Ain’t Ghostwriters Sexy?”

Not my words, obviously, heaven forfend, but those of Horace Bent, éminence grise of the Bookseller magazine, and himself a strangely attractive man. I feel I must thank him, not only on behalf of myself but on behalf of all my fellow literary wall flowers as we shuffle awkwardly in the shadows of the great literary prom dance, too shy and unsure of ourselves to step out into the spotlight. Mr Bent, you see, has also been to a preview of “The Ghost” and has had his heartbeat quickened by the performance of "dapper" Ewan McGregor, our representative in the limelight.

A Viewing Room in Soho

An email out of the blue invites me to a preview of Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost”, in a viewing room behind a discreet Soho door and up dark, creaking wooden stairs.

No sign of the email sender when I arrive, just a tiny cinema sparsely populated with professionals. There can be no sign of Polanski during this launch either, or course, because he is under house arrest in Switzerland for crimes too old and too famous to be regurgitated here, except that his fate strangely mirrors that of Pierce Brosnan’s character in the film, an ex British Prime Minister holed up in a rich man’s heavily guarded beach house. Once swept to power on a wave of adoration he is now wanted for war crimes and the publishers who have paid out millions for his memoirs are demanding speedy delivery of a manuscript that will recoup their outlay.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the promotional machine for Tony Blair’s forthcoming memoir is kicking into life with suggestions of publication in the autumn. No one has bothered to make any secret of the fact that Pierce Brosnan’s character was modelled by its creator, novelist Robert Harris, on Blair himself. Blair and Harris used to be friends but, one imagines, not any more.

When Harris’s book, “The Ghost”, was published, bearing quotes from my own book, “Ghostwriting” at the opening of every chapter, I was just starting work on a book for the mysterious futurologist and educationalist, Jim Martin. As I travelled out to his private island in Bermuda the parallels seemed uncanny. But whereas the secret tunnels, fantastical buildings and gardens that riddle Jim Martin’s island are drenched in sunshine, Polanski’s wind and rain-swept landscapes are altogether bleaker and darker, the violent sea grey and menacing rather than brilliant blue and sparkling. In Polanski and Harris’s world there is a body on the beach rather than the sails of millionaires’ yachts bobbing cheerfully off shore.

The ghost of the title is played by Ewan McGregor, a Chandleresque protagonist suddenly transported into a closed, dangerous, mysterious world. Initially, as with many ghostwriting projects in the real world, virtually nothing going on around him makes sense. But then slowly, as he grows familiar with his story and the characters, he sees the terrible truth materialise out of the lies and secrets.

As the film ended and the lights came back on there was still no sign of the e-mail sender who had assured me he was so looking forward to meeting me, and in the bright sunlight of Old Compton Street the darkness and menace of the film begins to fade. But actually Polanski and Harris’s world is all around us. Polanski himself is still under house arrest, Blair’s publishers still have a memoir they have to sell, there is still talk of possible war crimes accusations hanging in the air and still no one can really explain what madness drove us to go to war in Iraq with the Americans. There are conspiracy theories circulating on the internet as to why the authorities should have chosen the moment when Blair was running for European President to resurrect the case against Polanski after so many decades of indifference.

Nothing, as always, is quite as safe as it seems as I head with my wife to Little Italy in Frith Street for a late lunch.

Slumdog Star to Play The Little Hero

I was excited to read in yesterday’s Hindustan Times that the hero of my book “The Little Hero”, Iqbal Masih, a bonded child labourer in Lahore, is to be played by Ayush Khedeker, who shot to global fame by playing the youngest Jamal Malik in Slumdog Millionaire so vibrantly.

Reading "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid the other day vividly reminded me of my research trip to Lahore with Riff Khan-Hinton, the producer of the film, (we were even staying in the same hotel as one of the book's two protagonists). Mohsin Hamid completely captures the atmosphere of this dangerous city, seething with so many varied experiences, stories and emotions and I’m sure the team Riff has put together will do the same with Iqbal's moving tale – little Ayush is perfect casting for the part.

Fantastic Ghost Writer Film Trailer

As the launch or Roman Polanski's filmed version of Robert Harris' "The Ghost" starring Ewan Mcgregor, Pierce Brosnan and Kim Cattrall, draws closer some fantastic trailers are starting to appear on the Internet. The US trailer is up on FirstShowing.net and it looks stunning. The film seems now to be called "The Ghost Writer" - let's hope the cinema-loving public can overlook Polanski's current personal difficulties and just sit back to enjoy the ride - this is just what ghostwriters' lives are like, honest!
http://www.firstshowing.net/2010/01/28/official-us-trailer-for-roman-polanskis-the-ghost-writer/

“You Have Written a Masterpiece – But You Are Not a Name”.

Interesting piece in the Telegraph today about Alexandre Dumas, author of 'The Three Musketeers' and 'The Count of Monte Cristo', and his ghost writer, or ‘nègre’ as folks like me are sweetly referred to over there, Auguste Jules Maquet.

“In the 1830s,” the piece claims, “Maquet, a novelist and playwright, had tried to have his works published but was told: ‘You have written a masterpiece, but you’re not a name and we only want names’.”

Plus ça change is all I can say.

The Dark Glamour of Haiti

I was drawn to Haiti as a naïve young travel writer 30 years ago because in The Comedians Graham Greene had made it seem a darkly glamorous and dangerous place. Greene was there during Papa Doc’s reign of terror and by the time I arrived it was his son, Baby Doc, who was ensconced in the white folly of a palace which now lies in ruins, as uninhabitable as the rest of city around it.

The fabulous, exotic Grand Hotel Oloffson, where Greene had set his story, still stood on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince and one of Greene’s original characters, (the gossip columnist, Petit Pierre, in the book), Aubelin Jolicoeur still propped up the bar.

‘He has made himself one of the country’s leading characters,’ I wrote at the time, ‘affecting cane, monocle, cravat and a theatrically camp manner which makes many unaware of just how much influence he has at the presidential palace and in ministerial offices.’

In one of those ministerial offices I met the island’s then director of tourism, ‘a Gucci-clad minister by the name of Theo Duval’.

‘Why do we travel?’ he mused. ‘To feel in a pleasant way, to make a loop in the straight line of our existence, escaping into timelessness, a dreamlike state in which we are not reminded of our servitude.’

It was the first truly poor place I had ever visited and I was shocked to see how close to the brink of chaos people can survive, and frightened to see how fragile a veneer civilisation actually is.

If I remember rightly The Comedians ends with one of the departing characters throwing a handful of coins from a car window, causing a dangerous riot amongst the scrabbling horde of street children – an image which we are now seeing magnified and repeated nightly on the news.

‘When people come to Haiti,’ Aubelin Jolicoeur told me, ‘they always try to make the story funny. They never take it seriously. All through the centuries we have been ostracised by the world because we were the first black republic. Always we are misunderstood and misinterpreted. There is a bad spell on Haiti.’

Well, I guess no one is laughing now.