Ghostwriter in a Hurry; Pity the hack who works for Gavin Newsom.

 Ghostwriter in a Hurry - The American Conservative   

"The memoir has been praised for its literary qualities, for its humility, for its honesty. It possesses none of these things. It is a pastiche of introspection; unconvincing and shallow, like Newsom himself. "

 "Let’s start with the acknowledgments, usually the best place to begin in a political memoir. Here the author admits that he is less composer and more collaborator. Although his name appears on the cover and the story is his own, the real work of compilation is done by a shadow army of ghostwriters, developmental editors, line editors, copy editors, and fact checkers. No one feels any compunction about this arrangement. It is just the way the business works. The writers and editors offer their services, the author accepts, and everyone who participated in the project gets half a line of thanks. Most people know you can’t judge a book by its cover. Only those in publishing understand that you must consult the acknowledgements.

   "Gavin Newsom is cognizant of this industry dynamic, and it suits him well. The governor of California is one of the most forthright fakers in American politics. He proudly declares in the acknowledgements of Young Man in a Hurry that he did not write his memoir. Instead, he “enjoyed the privilege” of hiring Mark Arax, a literary nonfiction journalist in California, to do the work for him. The idea was to produce something classier than a campaign book. Arax’s role “went beyond mere ghostwriter,” Newsom says. “He asked for one thing: that the memoir would go where it needed to go, no matter how personal and wrenching, and I agreed.”

   "That’s a big promise, especially coming from a guy who is eyeing the White House in 2028. Pity that Newsom doesn’t deliver. Young Man in a Hurry fails on its own terms. It is neither personal nor wrenching. Worse, neither author nor writer seems to understand how badly he has blundered. Nor, I should add, do most reviewers. The memoir has been praised for its literary qualities, for its humility, for its honesty. It possesses none of these things. It is a pastiche of introspection; unconvincing and shallow, like Newsom himself. 

   "The problem of authenticity is one with which Newsom has struggled ever since he got into politics. His family is one of the most venerable in San Francisco, and he spent much of his childhood gadding about the world with the Getty children, whose family trust his father administered. His first political assignment was an appointed position, courtesy of Willie Brown, another friend of his father’s. Almost every position has occupied since has owed something to his family name and connections. Newsom does not deny nor downplay any of it. But he insists that he has known struggle too. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother had to work three jobs just to get by. He claims that as a child he was gangly, awkward, and afflicted by undiagnosed dyslexia. When he grew up, he became aware of a painful duality within himself that he has spent years attempting to understand." . . .More...