Ghostwriting and the political book culture

[Americano]

An interesting article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-fehrman-ghost-20100523,0,7195294.story

Autobiographies are mostly crap.

[Michael]

An interesting article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-fehrman-ghost-20100523,0,7195294.story

Autobiographies are mostly crap.

I think that political, media and celebrity 'autobiographies' of people under the age of 50 are not to be considered 'autobiographies' properly understood. These are merely book-length marketing brochures - designed, manufactured and distributed - for personal career enhancing purposes.

Real autobiographies written by people in retrospective of their lives generally are an interesting genre of literature and history.

Or, on a more esoteric note, these ghost-writing staffs do raise a 'post-modern' question of the 'identity' of authorship of any given piece of work.

I think the idea of 'the author' is entirely predicated upon the principles of ownership of property. Hence, one can say Sarah Palin wrote a book - yet is likely she never wrote a single word of it. Sarah Palin owns the book that was written for her.

Is a ghostwriter any different than any other kind of employee who creates something of value that is then appropriated as the property of the owner?