GHOSTING, by Jennie Erdal
main page, here
ESSAY
By SARAH LYALL
BEHIND the desk in his incense-scented office in Mayfair, his silk tropical-patterned tie matching his pocket handkerchief and the lining of the jacket of his suit, Naim Attallah -- businessman, publisher, author - pulls out a fat folder of press clippings. They are about ''Ghosting,'' a memoir by Jennie Erdal that describes how, for some 15 years, she wrote almost every word that appeared under his name. Published last fall in Britain and forthcoming in the United States from Doubleday next month, Erdal's book has become an obsession for its subject. His voice is sad, then angry, then both. ''It is a betrayal of trust,'' he says.
When they met in the early 1980's, Erdal was a bookish, unwordly Scotswoman and soon-to-be-divorced mother of three young children. Attallah -- called Tiger in her book, but readily identifiable -- was the extravagantly rich chief executive of the British luxury goods house Asprey, and a literary impresario whose holdings included Quartet Books, a small literary publishing house, and The Literary Review, a magazine edited by Auberon Waugh and famous, among other things, for its annual Bad Sex Prize.
Hired to acquire and translate Russian books for Quartet, Erdal was swept by degrees into Attallah's intoxicating cult of personality. Though never romantic, their relationship was peculiarly intimate, as parasitic as it was symbiotic. By the time they parted ways, she says, her life had become virtually devoted to doing his bidding.
At first, Attallah, a flamboyant Palestinian, brought a tornado of excitement, intrigue and exoticism to her sheltered existence. (She worked mostly from home in St. Andrews, Scotland.) In return, she gave him literary credibility and, even more precious, her words, in the books, articles, reviews and letters she wrote under his name. Her voice became intermingled with his, and finally lost altogether.
''The fact that I was writing as someone else -- with a mask on, as it were -- inevitably added yet another layer of complexity,'' Erdal writes. ''I did and did not feel responsible for the words on the page; I did and did not feel that they belonged to me; I did and did not feel that I could defend them in my heart.''
Yet it was a rich collaboration, in which Tiger provided the inspiration and the well-known name, and she the talent to translate it into prose.
Erdal evolved from editor to amanuensis in the late 80's, when Tiger suggested a book of interviews with women. He interviewed 300 of them for ''Women,'' and many others for subsequent books, from Winston Churchill's daughter Lady Soames to Leni Riefenstahl. Erdal earnestly prepared all the questions; he asked them, eliciting startling intimacies with his ''lethal combination of charm and chutzpah,'' as Erdal writes. One reviewer declared him ''a magician interviewer of the highest order.''
In 1994, after the release of their sixth book of interviews, Tiger decided they should begin writing novels.
'' 'We need to evolve,' he says. I do not demur,'' Erdal writes. But what kind of novel? A complicated negotiation ensues over whose imaginative life provides the richer material. Erdal suggests a scene at the funeral of the male narrator's mother. ''Darleeng, PLEEEase, do we have to have the death?'' Tiger asks. He fears this will offend his own mother. She convinces him that he and the narrator are not one and the same.
It is an intricate dance between persuader and persuaded, in which ghost and ghosted take turns leading. The result was the novel ''A Timeless Passion,'' about an Italian man living in London who returns to his homeland. It was published in 1995, to favorable reviews.
There was a second novel, ''Tara and Claire,'' and more and more articles, until Erdal began to wilt under the strain. Remarried and facing the unhappy prospect of a third novelistic collaboration, she finally called it off. Quitting was her liberation. ''Ghosting'' is the first book ever published under her own name.
In London, where it was an open secret that Attallah had a shadowy figure stashed away somewhere who did his writing for him, ''Ghosting'' has been described as a coming-out for Erdal and as the unmasking, or unghosting, of Attallah. Critics have praised its sense of humor, intelligence, lucidity. But it has left some reviewers uneasy. While Erdal maintains that her book is an affectionate, loving portrait, it can also be seen as an act of betrayal, even revenge.
Part of her intention in the book, Erdal said in a telephone interview, was to own up to her own culpability in a partnership she describes as ''complex and fascinating and in many ways absurd.'' It had begun to consume her; sometimes she felt ''no better than a common whore,'' as a former university professor once called her in disgust.
''Passing something off as your own when you haven't written it and couldn't in a million years have done it is not honorable behavior,'' Erdal says. ''Nor,'' she adds, ''is colluding in it for 15 years, especially if you care, as I do, about language. Why give your words away?''
Erdal maintains that ''Ghosting'' is her story, not Attallah's, and that she gave him a different name in order to make the portrait archetypal rather than specific.
''For me the main issue is not disclosure,'' she says, and the book is ''about growing up, being a daughter, a mother, a single parent, a translator; it's about language and the way we communicate with each other.''
But Tiger is the soul of the book, its meat, its color. In Erdal's account, he often comes across as generous, charming, wonderfully amusing. But as the book goes on, he grows increasingly willful, capricious, demanding, neurotic, narcissistic and almost monstrous in his need for instant gratification.
The anecdotes are hilarious -- Tiger bossing around a flight attendant on a plane; Tiger insisting on preposterous sex scenes in the novels, or shining his charm on his employees. (As publisher of Quartet, Attallah was famous for his office full of glamorous assistants, who over the years included Nigella Lawson.)
Attallah, though, doesn't see the joke, particularly as he once regarded Erdal as a close friend.
''She exaggerated everything, painted me like a buffoon,'' Attallah said in an interview. He is distressed by anecdotes meant, for instance, to reveal his haphazard grasp of English. ''If you have affection for someone, you don't say that he doesn't know the difference between humility and humiliation,'' Attallah said. ''If Jennie resented me, I didn't know it until after she published this book. She has always been very affectionate with me.''
Attallah does not dispute, and says he never has, that Erdal wrote his novels or even many of his letters. He says the various newspaper columns she wrote with his ideas and name were cooked up in part by her as money-making ventures. (She got half the fees).
''I was very busy,'' he said. ''Does Blair write all his speeches?''
Gone from Asprey and no longer rich, but as glamorous as ever, Attallah is now writing his own memoirs -- using his own voice this time, he says. The first volume, ''The Old Ladies of Nazareth,'' about his childhood in that city, was published recently by Quartet and mostly respectfully received. Erdal feels that is fitting: she has her memories and he has his.
The two last spoke in 2001, when Attallah learned the book's title and threatened to sue (he is known for his litigiousness). But Erdal persists in hoping he'll come around, as if she could somehow restore their old closeness. Last August, she sent Attallah a letter. ''Ghosting'' was a loving portrait of him, she wrote, if only he could see it that way. ''We have been so close for so long,'' she said. ''I hope that we can meet and laugh and talk together as good friends.'' She hasn't heard back.
Sarah Lyall writes for The Times from London.
His glory rested on her words
Reviewed by Carlo Wolf
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Ghosting
A Double Life
By Jennie Erdal
DOUBLEDAY; 272 PAGES; $24
Jennie Erdal could have called her breakthrough book "Emancipation" or "Liberation," because it is a "memoir a clef" about commanding one's identity. Not only is the wonderful "Ghosting" inspiring, but it is also uncommonly wise in the ways of writing, Erdal's hard-earned specialty.
I dub this a memoir a clef because "Ghosting" is thinly veiled history, indeed. According to British newspaper accounts, the man in Erdal's memoir whom she calls Tiger, the antihero around whom she revolved, the employer who kept her at bay as his ghostwriter but also, even if inadvertently, turned her on to her truer self, is Naim Attallah, the publisher of Quartet Books, a British imprint. (Perhaps she named him Tiger in her memoir out of deference to a working relationship that for a long time benefited both.)
"Ghost writing is not new," Erdal, a Scottish native, writes. "It might almost qualify as the oldest profession if prostitution had not laid an earlier claim. And there is more than a random connection between the two: they both operate in rather murky worlds, a fee is agreed in advance and given 'for services rendered,' and those who admit to being involved, either as client or service-provider, can expect negative reactions -- anything from mild shock and disapproval to outright revulsion."
Setting the stage this way might lead one to think that Tiger, the hub of this engaging book, is a cad. He is, but he's also a flamboyant, excitable -- and lovable -- eccentric who blends naivete and chutzpah in extraordinarily original ways.
In the early '80s, when Erdal landed in London eager to work in publishing, Tiger put her to work as a specialist in modern Russian fiction. When she excelled at that nascent, promising field, he leveraged her loyalty and pressed her into ghosting what turned out to be best-selling books of celebrity interviews, first of women, and later of men. Ultimately, in thrall to his insatiable ego and Erdal's skill and compliance, Tiger persuaded her to write two novels under his name. Vulnerable because her first husband had left her, emboldened by his caring and demanding successor, Erdal finally decided that she'd had enough. This book is the result of, and of a piece with, a life Erdal sketches with great economy and vividness, from her repressed childhood to her happy second marriage. Here, she reminisces about growing up in a household where she learned that language can be a barrier:
"In our house it was usually easy to work out what was good and what was bad. Some things were regarded as good in themselves: for example, eating slowly, Formica, curly hair, secrecy, patterned carpets, straight legs, Scotch broth, bananas, going to the toilet before leaving the house, not crying whatever the circumstances -- the goodness of these things was not open to challenge. Thus a child with curly hair who liked bananas and never cried was praised to the skies. ... However, in the way we spoke and the words we used, it was much harder to know good from bad, right from wrong."
The world Tiger offered was far warmer than any Erdal had previously known. It was also far more extravagant; Tiger threw money around heedlessly, a behavior that eventually caught up with him despite the critical and commercial success he enjoyed, largely thanks to Erdal. (She graciously acknowledges Tiger treated her well; her portrayal of him isn't bitter, just sober.)
Erdal peppers her easy-rolling tale with insights into writing, translation, writing about sex, her platonic relationship (and then some) with Tiger, enchanting and wry accounts of the French countryside where the two worked and commentary on Tiger's dazzling (and occasionally absurd) social scene.
So why did it take Erdal 15 long years to leave Tiger's employ? She suggests stability was one reason, insecurity another. Besides, ghosting for Tiger meant never having to take responsibility for the work -- and protected her from feelings that could be very painful. Also, it wasn't just a job; it was a unique social whirl that included such people as Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker equally famous for her originality and her propaganda for the Nazis. Tiger published Riefenstahl's memoirs; at the launch party, images of Riefenstahl's movies flickered on the walls, prompting Erdal to suggest that at bottom, Riefenstahl may have been a naif:
"Perhaps she knew not what she was doing, only how to do it," Erdal muses. With "Ghosting," Erdal proves she knows both. This is her first book under her own name. Now that she's conquered the memoir, we look forward to her first novel.
Carlo Wolff is a writer in Cleveland.
April 8, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
Living like a modern-day Cyrano
Ghosting A Double Life Jennie Erdal Doubleday: 272 pp., $24
By Merle Rubin Special to The Times, Special to The Times
The first words we encounter in Jennie Erdal's absorbing
memoir, "Ghosting," are those of a tender love letter written by a rather
erudite man to his wife. Only, as Erdal next informs us, the words weren't
written by the man but for him by Erdal herself.
"The letters mattered greatly to the man who put his name to them," she adds,
"for they often expressed what he was not capable of articulating on his own….
He savoured each sentence, pausing over every nuance, weighing up the effect of
this or that word."
Erdal thus begins her account of becoming a ghostwriter with a self-portrait
reminiscent of Cyrano de Bergerac, for hers is, in part, a story in which a
clever, literate person is seduced into helping a more glamorous but less
articulate one express himself. In the nearly two decades in which she worked
with the colorful British publisher of Quartet Books, Erdal says she ghostwrote
newspaper articles, speeches and several books, all of which appeared under his
name: "We worked well together, and on the whole I was a willing partner,
interested in the job and fascinated by the psychological processes involved on
both sides. Over the years I learned a great deal about vanity, the desire to
belong, the lengths a man will go to in affecting to be something other than he
is. And the lengths a woman will go to in colluding with the pretence."
Transporting us back to 1981 and her first meeting with the Middle Eastern-born
British publishing sensation Naim Attallah, to whom she refers in this memoir as
"Tiger" but whose name is found in the notes, Erdal also likens him to a rare
tropical bird, brilliantly plumed and bejeweled, charming, impulsive and
slightly primitive: "His body is never still but moves to the rhythm and
cadences of his speech pattern. He does a low salaam and beckons me to follow,
like a Bedouin prince inviting an honored guest to his tent."
The traditional, risible British susceptibility to the lure of the supposedly
romantic "Orient" seems in play here, and for a moment, we almost feel as if
we're in an updated version of "The Sheik." "Ghosting," however, is not a tale
of sexual seduction, not in any conventional sense. It is, instead, a portrait
of a curiously intimate professional relationship that proved both symbiotic and
parasitic.
The product of a somewhat grim Scottish Presbyterian upbringing, Erdal
discovered she had a flair for foreign languages and literatures. It was her
knowledge of Russian that first brought her into contact with "Tiger," who
offered her a position managing his Russian list. It was the perfect job for a
young wife and mother of three, enabling her to work at home in Scotland. When
Erdal's husband stunned her by walking out on their marriage in 1985, her
warmhearted boss floated her a loan and came up with a writing project to
benefit them both.
Ghostwriting nonfiction, Erdal found, was not too difficult. But when "Tiger"
decided it was time to make his debut as a novelist, it was a different matter
entirely: "I tried to think myself into what I imagined Tiger's style might be,
but the more I searched for his voice, the more I caught my own breaking
through; the more I tried to realise his literary aspirations, the more my own
seemed to intrude. The novel did not grow organically; it was force-fed and
boosted with steroids."
With admirable economy, grace and humor, Erdal conveys how difficult and deeply
unsatisfying it can be to write without sincerity, without that sense of
compulsion that comes from within. In deftly comic scenes, she contrasts Tiger's
amusingly simplistic notions about writing with her own. Engaging though he was,
however, Erdal also came to see through his apparent naivete: "Tiger, while
affecting a boyish ingenuousness, was actually endowed with a Machiavellian
shrewdness…. At times it seemed ungenerous not to succumb to his childlike
excitement, which came over as a kind of innocent hopefulness endlessly
generated and regenerated. However, I knew it was driven by something not at all
innocent."
Although Tiger is in some ways the book's most memorable character, Erdal
refrains from giving us details of his background. What Erdal has written is not
an exposé of the publishing world but a self-analytical account of her
experience in it. Erdal is a gifted writer, and this memoir reveals the
impressive range of her skills. Along with thoughtful and illuminating
reflections on language, writing and the emotional costs of lying, "Ghostwriting"
is filled with poignantly hilarious scenes in which Erdal and her boss,
attempting to pursue a common goal from utterly divergent sensibilities, try to
reach a meeting of the minds. Whether she is mining this rich vein of social
comedy or delving into her own background in the classic mode of autobiographer,
her writing displays a sincerity that compels attention and a nicely ironic
perceptiveness that enhances the pleasure of reading her.
Merle Rubin is a contributing writer to Book Review.
|
The ghost in the machine
By FREDA GARMAISE
Saturday, April 30, 2005 Page D5
Ghosting:
A Double Life
By Jennie Erdal
Random House, 270 pages, $32.95
As a part-time ghostwriter, I've been an advice giver (what to do when you find granny masturbating), a know-it-all (how to get lead in a pencil) and the memoirist for a socialite who fired me when she found I didn't share her affection for Francisco Franco.
I was not in Jennie Erdal's class.
She was a full-time ghostwriter working exclusively for a flamboyant British publisher she calls The Tiger. Like me, she did it for the money. Unlike me, Erdal was a translator of Russian writers and used to finding precisely the right words to express the meaning of others. For The Tiger -- Naim Attallah is his real name -- she had to be him, and she tells us what it was like in Ghosting, a fascinating memoir with its surefire elements of scandal and celebrity.
They were an unlikely pair. She is everything (careful, learned, cautious) that this charismatic, impulsive man, with his dodgy English, is not. He did what millions would like to do: He lived the life, she wrote about it, and he frequently read it back to her as though he'd written it himself.
Erdal picked up the pen for him for nearly 20 years, aiming to please and hoping that the habit she'd acquired in her dour childhood, of watching and listening, would do the trick. Most of the time it did. His reputation as a writer grew as she produced an interview book for him (supplying the questions which he posed and for which he was praised by William Trevor for "the subtlety of his interrogation"), columns, letters, commentary, articles and two novels, which she was asked to make "thrilling," "very, very romantic" and "with poetic sex." One novel involved two women experiencing a joint orgasm (courtesy of a Tiger-like hero) while thousands of miles apart. How she managed this and other feats will be instructive to writers, ghost or not.
But even when she has the chance to be centre-stage, Erdal is mouse-like; it is The Tiger, with his vivid jacket linings and ties, his lapel sapphires and mismatched socks, who dominates. Nude pictures adorn the walls of his office at Quartet Books, which is also decorated with a tiger skin (inspiration for his name) and staffed by his "harem" of society girls (Davina, Candida, Arabella etc), used by Erdal as contrast to her simpler ways and superior intellect.
Attallah lives it up, and he sees to it that everyone else does, too. Erdal is well paid, treated to luxury cars, hotel suites and his villa in the Dordogne, where she writes and, at his insistence, sunbathes naked.
Although his urge to share often feels like "an assault on one's independence," Erdal finds, "Concealing your identity can actually be a strange sort of liberation. It can even be self-affirming since eventually you work out who you really are by who you are not." Well, that's one path to enlightenment.
But it is other writers and philosophers she often relies on to express who "she really is" and give voice to confessions such as, "I cannot believe a word out of my own mouth," quoted from John Banville's novel Shroud.
Attallah withdrew the offer to publish Ghosting when he saw that Erdal's idea of what would immortalize him wasn't his. Expecting the larger-than-life character she'd always dished up, he got instead the buffoon who'd bought his reputation for the sophisticated eloquence of his writing from another. Even if he believed he only needed her because he couldn't articulate his thoughts himself, she makes it clear that so much of the thinking is hers as well. How he felt when he saw the ghosted love letter to his wife, reprinted for all the world to see, can only be imagined. No wonder he found Erdal disloyal.
Particularly when her portrait of him is so lightly disguised that it was instantly known who he was. Just to show he could, Attallah wrote the first volume of his autobiography, The Old Ladies of Nazareth, himself -- no trouble getting it published, of course. But its reception has been mixed. He was better off when Erdal was doing it for him.
And how will Erdal be when she is doing it for herself? Perhaps she will take to romance writing of the loftier sort; she has a knack for it even when she is not being Attallah. And although his money enslaves her more than his charisma, Ghosting is something of a romantic cliché itself: magnetic older man changing the life of modest younger woman.
Without Attallah, Erdal might never have discovered that writing was what she wanted to do. Perhaps she needs a man, and Attallah's replacement might be her second husband (known only by his initials), who got her to give up the ghost and could be the one to inspire her in (as John Lennon put it) her own write.
Freda Garmaise is a New York writer who has been asked to ghost but prefers writing under her own name. Even if it doesn't pay as well.
May 22, 2005
STYLE & CULTURE
A former ghost takes to the light
Jennie Erdal's memoir tells of her long career writing in the name of a British publishing mogul. And he's not pleased.
By Susan Salter Reynolds, Times Staff Writer
IT'S no secret how hot the literary scene in London can be. Reviewers are more
outspoken; the press exhibits the same fascination with writers and publishers
that we shine on starlets and movie moguls. And everyone loves a good
controversy.
The latest flap is over Jennie Erdal's tell-all tale
of her almost-20-year career with publishing personality Naim Attallah (think
Donald Trump with good manners and literary savvy), which has parted the waters
on either side of London's Shepherd Market, where many of the bookish have their
well-appointed offices and where Quartet Books, Attallah's empire, is housed.
"Ghosting: A Double Life," Erdal's nuanced and captivating memoir (released in
the U.S. last month), is her effort to explain the forces that led her to
abandon a perfectly good career translating from Russian and acquiring Russian
titles for Quartet's list in exchange for the shadowy life of a ghostwriter.
Attallah, whom Erdal calls Tiger in the book after a resplendent skin on the
wall of his office, hired Erdal in 1981. He was, at the time, chief executive at
the luxury-goods store Asprey, owner of several public relations and consulting
firms, publisher of Quartet and the Women's Press (which publishes Angela Davis
and Alice Walker, among others) and the owner of several magazines, including
the Literary Review.
In those years, Erdal writes, she penned letters, speeches, newspaper articles,
a dozen works of nonfiction and two novels in his name. The setup allowed her to
work in Scotland, where she lives with her three children, coming to London only
when necessary. The London office, as she describes it, was a showcase for some
of the youngest, prettiest baronesses, heiresses and all-around society girls in
town.
Attallah, who is 74, called them all "Beloved," spanked bottoms and commented on
figures, Erdal writes. The favorite at any given time, she writes, was called
"La Favorita."
For Erdal, who calls the relationship "part symbiotic, part parasitic," things
began to sour while the two worked on the second novel, "A Timeless Passion,"
spending weeks at a time at Attallah's home in the Dordogne. Collaboration on
the sex scenes proved particularly thorny for Erdal, who in the past, especially
while writing the first novel, "Tara and Claire," had deferred to Attallah's
point of view. His desire in the second novel to present a male character whose
mistress would have an orgasm as he made love to his wife thousands of miles
away struck Erdal as more than a bit preposterous.
A true parting of the ways began, writes Erdal, when "I found myself raiding my
own knowledge and experience of the world rather than the author's." Faking
fiction, she writes, is a lot like "faking sincerity."
Erdal grew up in Scotland in a house where "much was done for show." Her parents
cared a great deal about what the neighbors thought, yet her mother
surreptitiously sold underwear from her home. Erdal was forced into locution
lessons to rid her of her beloved Scottish accent. No surprise that she became a
translator, which she describes as a kind of "disappearing act" but also "an
abiding love affair with words."
"Ghosting" is a wistful book, the story of a woman who lost herself for a time.
You grow up, she writes, and "for a long time you forget who you were."
The book begins with a love letter supposedly written by Erdal to one of Tiger's
mistresses. "That letter was never written or sent," Attallah says. "But
reviewers in London were nasty about it. That caused me a great deal of pain."
Attallah also resents that in the book, Tiger, who is obsessed with time, wears
three watches. "Absurd!" he says. "I only wear two!" Erdal describes a scene in
which the two are on a plane and Tiger asks the flight attendant for a glass of
water because his "wee-wee" is yellow. "Can you imagine?" he gasps into the
phone. "I who have run companies … why would I think that anyone was interested
in my wee-wee?"
Erdal is amused and often perplexed by the moments in the book that have most
offended her former boss. Attallah thinks they are symptomatic of her confusion
between fiction and nonfiction.
He compares the book to an opera: "The basic story is there, but then it becomes
larger than life. There are elements of truth in the book, but there are many
embellished stories."
Attallah, who says he encouraged Erdal to write the book and who read the first
two chapters before they were published, says frequently that he values loyalty
in his relationships, and he was stung by Erdal's portrayal of Tiger as
illiterate and an overdressed buffoon. He says that while she did write the
novels, the nonfiction — including a very well-received anthology of interviews
with more than 300 famous women — was a collaborative process in which Erdal
prepared him for the interviews and helped "collate" the material.
"I was egged on to do the novels," he says, "because her husband had left her
and she had a family to support. I gave her half of the royalties. I wanted her
to put her name on the books, but she said no because she felt I was more
exposed so it would get more reviews. It was the biggest mistake of my life."
Erdal seems genuinely disappointed in Attallah's reaction to the book. She has
written him several letters and cards since its publication but has gotten no
response, she says. At home in Scotland, she says, "I don't want to duck the
question of betrayal, but there's more to it. A lot of writing is about
unlocking secrets you have inside yourself. There are huge emotional costs to
lying, which is a loaded word. The levels of pretense multiplied as the ghosting
became more extreme. I wanted to take a look at the psychology of that."
Something out of Dickens?
She also seems to miss her old boss (and it must be said that Attallah spoke
fondly of their time together as well). "This is someone," she says, "who could
ring me up about a Christmas issue in which he was supposed to list his favorite
books and say to me, 'What were my favorite books?' " While Erdal feels she got
to know Attallah quite well, she believes she remains a mystery to him.
"In many ways, he lends himself to being written about," she says. "He's such a
Dickensian character. I colluded to the extent that I wanted to please him, just
as I wanted to please my parents." Erdal explains that she found herself in a
place she never meant to end up, a position that was not sustainable.
In the book, her new husband finally blows up when Tiger calls for the umpteenth
time while they are having a dinner party. The "Beloved stuff," Attallah's
behavior toward the young women in his office, was also off-putting to Erdal.
"Everyone talks about how much he loves women, but if you didn't go along with
the Beloved stuff you were considered a spoiler. It made your life more
difficult. If someone left to go to another job he considered it a betrayal."
Attallah just published the first book of his own three-part memoir, "The Boy in
England," in London (there is not yet an American publisher). A prequel to the
memoir, "Old Ladies of Nazareth," was published last year to good reviews. "It's
important for him to prove something to himself," Erdal says, "but it's pitiful;
it's as if he were trying to prove something he can't quite prove, and he can't
see that. His ego is something fantastic, and it makes him vulnerable.
"I never," Erdal says in response to Attallah's claim, "called him illiterate.
Denial runs deep — he believes in his own myth and puts such energy and ambition
into it. He is obsessional but also generous, charming and charismatic. His
faults are all tangled up with his virtues. He did believe that he was creating
the writing. I colluded in that."
Attallah is quick to give credit. "She did most of the writing. I did the plot.
I'm no Shakespeare," he says of his memoir.
Erdal is surprised by how wounded Attallah is. "He's spent his life in
publishing and must respect the right of authors to tell their own story. Many
people, including Blake Morrison in the Guardian, have pointed out that if he
could just be calm and take a long look at it, he would see it's not so
threatening.
"You can be fond of people you love and still see them clearly," says Erdal, who
is on her way to spend a few weeks in the Hebrides away from the chatter in a
seaside cottage where she will work on her next book, which she won't discuss.
A few days ago, she sent a birthday card to Attallah, who says, a little
ruefully, that he received it. He says that he is not going to sue for libel, in
part because it will make him look bad, "the big man trying to crush her," but
also because, as he says, "we shared a lot.
A
relationship is sacrosanct."
VOICE OF AMERICA News in Russian
«Голоc Амepики»
«Работая призраком» Дженни Эрдал
Лев Лосев
29.03.2005
Наим Атталла, уроженец Палестины, сделал прекрасную карьеру в Англии. Главным его детищем был торговый дом «Аспри», специализирующийся на предметах роскоши. Среди побочных предприятий – сравнительно небольшое издательство «Квартет». Элегантный, экстравагантный, импозантный Атталла не только издавал книги, он их и писал. А также – журнальные статьи, рецензии, интервью.
Дженни Эрдал, разведенная мать троих детей, женщина серьезная, ученая, жила так далеко от Лондона, как это только возможно в Великобритании – а именно в шотландском городке Сент-Эндрюс. Сейчас вышла и наделала шума книга Дженни Эрдал «Работая призраком» (Jennie Erdal. Ghosting. Doubleday, April 2005). В ней рассказывается о том, как в течение пятнадцати лет она писала книги, а также журнальные статьи, рецензии, интервью и даже письма за Наима Атталлу. Такая у нее была работа, писателем-призраком. Атталла ставил свое славное имя под ее текстами, гонорар они делили пополам.
Вообще, тот факт, что знаменитые и богатые, как правило, пишут свои книги не сами, а нанимают профессиональных писателей, общеизвестен. Наемные перья на литературном жаргоне именуются «призраками» (“ghosts”), и буквальным переводом названия книги Эрдал, “Ghosting”, было бы «Призракуя». Имя «призрака» обычно упоминается мелким шрифтом где-нибудь в начале, в выходных данных или в конце книги. Два года назад Хилари Клинтон опубликовала свою автобиографию, такую длинную, словно бы она прожила не пятьдесят, а сто пятьдесят лет. Продраться сквозь эту многословную скукоту я не мог, но заглянул в конец. На 529 странице стояло имя того, кто это сочинение от первого лица действительно написал.
В отличие от невнятного «призрака», накатавшего автобиографию Хилари Клинтон, Тони Шварц, «призрак», нанятый миллиардером Доналдом Трампом, умело создал своему нанимателю литературный стиль, соответствующий самоуверенному, если не сказать наглому, стилю поведения этого богача. Первая книга Шварца, то бишь, Трампа, начинается так: «Я пишу это не для денег. У меня их хватает, даже больше, чем мне нужно. Охота писать – и пишу». Это, конечно, голос Трампа, хотя сочинял эти предложения Шварц. Который делал это ради денег. Которых ему не хватало, и уж точно было не больше, чем нужно.
Работа «призрака», как мы видим, сходна с актерской – нужно вжиться в роль, не выходить из роли. Хорошо, если досталась роль яркого персонажа, вроде Доналда Трампа. А вот писателя Томаса Маллона несколько лет назад нанял бывший вице-президент Соединенных Штатов Дэн Куэйл – политик бесцветный и получивший в американском обществе репутацию, наверно, не совсем заслуженную, человека недалекого. Что тут было делать писателю? Писать в своем собственном литературном, интеллектуальном стиле? Но тогда будет слишком очевидно, что книга – фальшивка. Подделываться под невыразительную манеру высказывания Куэйла? Но это профессионально неловко – за что тогда деньги берешь? Маллон выбрал средний путь. Он записывал банальности Куэйла, но в ясной, последовательной форме.
Получилась честная книга. Очевидно и то, что написал ее профессионал, и то, что она представляет рассказ Куэйла о самом себе. Для тех, кого интересует момент американской истории, когда Дэн Куэйл находился на авансцене, книга небесполезная.
Сотрудничество Дженни Эрдал и Наима Атталлы было другого рода. Дженни, сидя в своем Сент-Эндрюсе, была глубоко законспирирована. Атталла в Лондоне пожинал плоды литературной славы.
Началось с малых жанров – статей и рецензий. Затем у Атталлы появилась идея сделать книгу интервью со знаменитостями. Все вопросы, со всевозможными вариациями, приготовила для него Эрдал. От Атталлы требовалось лишь использовать свой знаменитый шарм в общении с интервьюируемыми. Интервью имели большой успех и за первой книгой, последовало еще пять подобных.
Вдохновленный успехом, Атталла решил стать автором романа. Роман, изготовленный для него Эрдал, назывался «Безвременная страсть». В нем рассказывалось об итальянце, всю взрослую жизнь прожившем в Лондоне, который едет в родные места. Эрдал, которая по образованию специалист по русской литературе, видимо, не без оглядки на «Доктора Живаго», начала роман с драматической сцены похорон матери героя. Это обеспокоило Атталлу: «Ведь моя мама жива, прочтет – расстроится», - говорил он своему «призраку». Эрдал пришлось объяснять писателю разницу между романом и рассказом о собственной жизни.
«Безвременная страсть» имела успех, так же как и следующий роман «Тара и Клэр». Аттала заказал третий, но вместо этого Эрдал взяла и написала книгу об истории их 15-летнего «сотрудничества».
«Это книга не о нем, - говорит она, - хотя это вряд ли достойно – выдавать за свои слова, которые тебе и за миллион лет в голову бы не пришли, но обо мне, о моей виновности. Вначале все было интересной игрой, а под конец я стала чувствовать себя просто продажной шлюхой. Это книга – обо мне».
Со своей стороны Наим Атталла говорит о предательстве и не видит ничего зазорного в том, что было. «Тони Блэру ведь тоже кто-то речи пишет», - говорит Атталла.
Вот-вот. Я тоже, между прочим, не собираюсь раскрывать, кто пишет для меня мои книжные обзоры.