To be a ghostwriter is to enter into a particularly intimate relationship, akin to being someone’s criminal defense attorney, their tax accountant, or their therapist. You get to know them, warts and all, as you help them craft a book that tries to present their best selves to the world. You even learn to write in their voice. So the cardinal rule of ghostwriting is simple: Never make the client look bad.
Moehringer has broken this rule in spades lately, starting with cryptic tweets about errors that appear in Spare and, more recently, a lengthy airing of grievances in The New Yorker. The piece troubled me from the very first paragraph, which describes a moment in which he was arguing with Prince Harry while working on the book, who then jokes mischievously that he likes to get Moehringer worked up—a scene that, it seems to me, he did not have Harry’s permission to describe. This, to me, would be like opening a magazine to read your doctor describing an argument with you during a checkup, including your name and personal details about your medical history. (Imagining, of course, that you and your doctor’s relationship is bound by good faith rather than HIPAA.) How could you trust any doctor again?
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