Prince Harry’s ghostwriter tells what it was (really) like to write Spare

JR Moehringer does one of those jobs that are difficult to explain and even more complicated to make, the ghostwriter. And he is considered the best of all. Fifty-eight years old, New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote Prince Harry’s memoir Spare – The minor (available in Italy for Mondadori). And it is not the first time: wrote the autobiography of tennis player Andre Agassi (open) and that of Nike founder Phil Knight (Shoe Dog). In short, it can be said that he does it for a living.

His name never appears and this, as he recounts in a recent article for The New Yorker, is the best part. No performance anxiety, no spotlight and above all no danger of fueling the writer’s ego.

In this article written in the first person entitled Notes from Prince Harry’s ghostwriterJR Moehringer explains how he came to be the secret pen behind an autobiography (and no, it’s not George Clooney).

Simple: he was a journalist in the newsroom and his colleagues, who perhaps dealt with gossip or news and spent the night at the scene of the incident, passed him the notes, exhausted after hours and hours of stalking. In twenty minutes he packaged the article as if it had been there and the next day it appeared in the newspaper with the signature of his colleague. Sometimes he was the correspondent for a certain event and it was his notes from him that were used by others, even word for word, but without his signature.

And he has always been fine with it, unlike most of the press, who find a slice of gratification in seeing their contribution recognized and attributed in writing. Partly the reason is that JR Moehringer does not like his surname, due to an artist father, cumbersome but absent.

At a certain point, the serenity of having stripped himself of his name led him to do so on a larger scale and, indeed, he passed from articles to books. Prince Harry’s cost him two and a half years of Zoom calls, meetings with the Duke of Sussex and his friends and many, many battles with Lady Diana’s son about one detail or another. Often, in fact, he was afraid of being fired but, for the sake of the memoir, he held firm and sometimes won.

In the article, remember that when flew to Montecito to the Sussex home he was a guest in the annex and pampered by Meghan Markle with food and sweets (she knew he missed his family). Only when rumors of his involvement in the project began to circulate did JR Moehringer understand what it meant for him to be slandered in the press, followed by paparazzi and stalked by colleagues. Nobody understood how he felt and therefore – incredible but true – he called Harry to let off steam.

The witch hunt had begun, that is the lies contained in the pages, with recriminations and accusations of all kinds and then he understood for the first time fully how Lady Diana’s second son had felt all his life. And, as had never happened before, Spare – The minor gave him a voiceallowed the events of his existence to be told by him and by him alone.

When her daughter asked JR Moehringer what it meant to be a ghostwriter and the idea of ​​following in her father’s footsteps occurred to her, he wanted to tell her to change her mind and be her own author. She didn’t, but the reader finally got her point.

More stories from Vanity Fair that may interest you:

– Harry and Meghan, the distance from William and Kate

– Meghan Markle and Harry sometimes come back

– Prince Harry on children and the web

Source: Vanity Fair

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