You’re undoubtedly familiar with the term “Ghostwriter”. The word generally refers to a person, often a journalist, who is engaged to be the actual author of a book that will be credited to someone else, usually a famous person of the arts, sports, or politics. But during my college days in Boston during the 1900s “Ghostwriting” literally meant just that, a work written by a ghost!
Because the hands of ghosts are barely visible and have no substance they require considerable help getting their words down on paper. They need their own “Ghostwriter” – a flesh and blood person. Students from the 1960s made excellent scribes for specters, as you’ll find out in this story from the pen of an aspiring author, in his room on the third floor of a Boston University dormitory in Kenmore Square.
“I got two more rejection slips today Jim, one from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and the other from The Old Farmer’s Almanac. I couldn’t even get into Readers Digest with my funny story about almost getting into a fight with legendary Boston Celtics Center Bill Russell over a comment I made about him and Wilt Chamberlain.”
“Keep at it Will. Take it from your old pal and roommate, you’ve got talent. Eventually one of your stories will be accepted and you’ll be on your way.”
“Thanks Jim. I don’t get it. I’ve read Jack Kirouac, Kahlil Gibran, and Ernest Hemingway. I stay up all hours of the night smoking an endless chain of cigarettes and drinking from a bottomless cup of coffee. This method worked for those great writers, why not me?”
“Maybe they used liquor instead of coffee. Why don’t you try some rum?”
“No Jim. Remember what happened to me at that party. I drank four Rum and Cokes just to get up the courage to ask Norma Scallini to dance with me, but I ended up being ‘ossified’ – I was in a stupor, frozen to the couch. I couldn’t move. Booze just isn’t for me. I’ll stick with coffee.”
“Okay Will, whatever you say. I’m going over to Becky’s tonight. Her roommate is away for the week so if things work out right you won’t see me back in the dorm for two or three days. Good luck with the writing.”
“Luck won’t do it. I need some other kind of aid. Remember last week you told me about something you studied in your Psych class; Ghostwriting.”
“Yes we did study it Will and many people claim it really works. It’s actually called automatic writing. Why don’t you give it a try? Sit down with a pad of paper on the desk and a pencil in your hand. Put yourself in a relaxed state, like a trance. Start writing but don’t think about it. Just keep scribbling on the paper. According to those who believe in it, after a while some unseen force, perhaps a ghost, will take over and write something for you.”
“Thanks Jim. Nothing else has worked so tonight I’m going to attempt to let a ghost whip up a yarn for me.”
After his friend left, Will Stander brewed a pot of coffee in the large ten cup percolator he bought at the five and dime. When the coffee was done, he tore the cellophane wrapping from a fresh pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes, took a sniff of the aromatic tobacco, drew one out, and lit up.
As the smoke from the lucky circled his head, he sang the jingle used on television to advertise his favorite brand - ‘Cleaner, fresher, smoother. Luckies taste better. L S M F T! Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. Then he laughed as he recalled what his roommate always said about the letters, L S M F T – “Loose Sweaters Mean Floppy Tits”. He was a card that Jim.
Before he could get started on the automatic writing, Will needed to finish an assignment for his creative writing class: write a gripping story using just one or two sentences.
The example given by Professor Nelson was the 1948 classic by F. Brown: “The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.”
Will tried a variation on the theme: “The last man on earth opened the door after hearing a knock, before him stood the last woman on earth.”
Crumpling the paper into a tiny ball he shot it at the nearby wastebasket. “Two points!” he said when the tiny orb landed cleanly in the bucket. “And that’s about all professor Nelson would have given me for that.”
He tried another, “God created the world in six days. Man will create a weapon that can destroy it in six seconds.”
“That one’s no good either,” he told himself. “I can hear Professor Nelson now...”
“That is not a story Mr. Stander. It is merely an observation,” he will comment, pushing his glasses from his nose to his forehead, then he’ll scratch the grey whiskers on his chin before adding, “Though I do tend to agree with you.”
In frustration Will poured another coffee, fired up a fresh Lucky Strike and wandered over to the living room window. It was just past midnight. He looked down and noted that there were few cars on the street. Boston never was an all-night town like New York, although Ted’s Diner, just around the corner, was open 24 hours a day. You could always meet a few fellow students there, even at three or four in the morning.
Shifting his gaze towards Fenway Park he felt the warmth of familiarity when he saw the giant illuminated, red and white Citgo sign hanging high above the ballpark. A famous Boston landmark, it was even better known than the iconic Swan Boats of Boston Common.
Memories of Ted Williams, Dom Dimaggio, Yaz, Tony Conigliaro, and other great Red Sox players came flooding back to him.
Ted Williams, the last 400 hitter. In the early 1940s just before the ‘Big War’, he batted an amazing 406. Almost 20 years later, in 1960, he belted a home run in his final at bat before retiring at the age of 41. Ted blasted 521 ‘bombs’ despite being out of baseball for three prime years while dropping bombs of another kind as a fighter pilot for the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps during World War Two.
When the Korean conflict came along about a decade later, Ted answered the call one more time and spent the best part of two more prime years out of baseball, again flying fighter missions for the American armed forces.
Will’s mind wandered as he recalled the career highlights of the heroes of his youth. Without realizing it, he drifted back to his writing desk and picked up a pencil, absent-mindedly doodling on a pad of paper.
Much later, when the lamp on his desk was outshined by the rays of the morning sun, especially strong for mid-March, Will blinked his eyes repeatedly, trying to force himself awake. He hadn’t really slept, but on the other hand, he hadn’t been conscious for over six hours.
“There’s a stack of a hundred sheets or more piled up in front of me with writing on them and I don’t remember putting a single word on paper!” he said in amazement.
Will picked up his flattened pack of Luckies and fished around inside it. “I can’t be out. I just opened this pack last night. Ah there’s one.”
He drew out his last cigarette and crumpled the pack, holding it in front of his face while lining up a shot. The balled-up pack sailed from his hand and bounced off the rim of the waste basket before landing inside the bucket. “Two more points,” smiled will. “I’m up to four now.”
He dragged a match across the striker on a matchbook from the Lobster Claw on Huntington Avenue, where he had scored his first illegal drink of Seagram’s and Seven-up three years prior as a Freshman.
Igniting his last ‘Lucky’ he put what was left from the ‘ten-cupper’ into his mug and settled down to read the pages written by him, or perhaps by a ghost.
“This is good. This is good stuff!”
Thrilled after reading just six pages, Will knew that the tale he, or the ghost concocted, was top quality adventure fiction. It was a fantasy of love and war set in a mythical kingdom at the dawn of civilization.
After reading through to the last page, he grabbed the pile of papers and headed for the nearest subway station to make his way to Beacon Press, one of the oldest publishing houses in Boston.
“This is fine work,” extolled the junior editor Jim Pearson when he finished the first chapter. “I’m going to get Mrs. Annassus to have a look at it. She’s the head of fantasy fiction. We don’t publish a lot of that genre, but this looks special.”
Mrs. Annassus quickly agreed and signed Jim to a contract on the spot which gave him a five figure advance as well as a deal for five more books. She typed an order for 15,000 copies hardcover, and 40,000 paperbacks - a huge press run for a first-time author.
The book took off and immediately shot up the best seller lists. Fans of the sword and sorcery niche compared it favorably to the work of Robert Howard, the twisted genius behind dozens of great horror classics as well as the Conan the Barbarian series.
In June, a few days before the now successful author, Will Stander, was due to graduate from Boston University, his wonderful new life began to crumble to pieces because of the following item published in Boston’s largest newspaper, The Glove.
“The Boston Glove ‘Searchlight Team’ has uncovered evidence that B.U. student Willard Stander did not actually write “Grave Valor”, the adventure book which recently placed him on the New York Times Best Seller List.
“The investigative team headed up by Howie Barnical, learned that the book credited to Stander was part of a series of articles published in pulp magazines in the early 1900s shortly after the turn of the century. They were written by Lloyd Larson, who was an imitator and admirer of Conan the Barbarian author, Robert E. Howard. Unlike Howard, Larson’s work received little notice during his lifetime and has been mostly ignored by contemporary readers.”
Beacon Press immediately cancelled his contract and Boston University expelled him. With no degree and the shame of being called a plagiarist by the Boston Glove as well other Boston daily newspapers including the American Record, things looked very bleak for Will Stander.
Before leaving the school for the final time, Will was summoned to a meeting with his former Professor, Herman Nelson.
“Will, I called you in here because you’ve been a hard worker in my class. You are only a C student when measured by actual grades, but if I could grade you on desire and hard work, you'd get an A.”
“Thanks Professor Nelson. All I ever wanted to be was a writer. From the time I could read, and even before, I just wanted to tell stories. I guess I simply don’t have the talent. But I swear to you Professor I did not steal Grave Valor. It just came to me when I was practicing Ghostwriting.”
“Yes, Will I learned that from your roommate and I do believe you. What I think happened is that you read the story long ago and forgot about it. When you were in your trance you subconsciously and unintentionally copied Lloyd Larson’s original work.”
“That is possible professor but I’m sure I’ve never read anything by him nor had I heard of him until I read that story in the Glove. I have learned since, that his writing is not in print anymore. There’s no way I could get access to his work even if I wanted to.”
“That’s true Will. I tried to dig up some of his stuff and even I couldn’t find anything by him. Only a few of his works were ever actually published and most of them were in tiny publications. It was just by chance that the Glove investigative team happened upon a copy of an obscure pulp magazine from 1917. In it, word for word, was the story that you claimed to have written.”
“I never saw that magazine Professor. There’s no way I could have copied it.”
“It doesn’t matter Will. The damage is done. But I do have some good news.”
“I could use some good news. Not only am I not going to graduate and get my degree, but also the publishing company is suing me to get back the money they’ve paid me.”
“That’s the good news Will. They can’t recover a penny. Lloyd Larson’s work is in the public domain. You had the legal right to publish the book, even under your own name and to profit by it. Hire a lawyer and have him go to the publisher. You’ll be able to keep your money and since there’s now a lot of interest in Larson’s work, they’ll probably republish the book, keeping your name on it. They may reduce your royalty rate, but you’ll still make some money from it.”
“Well that takes some of the sting away Professor. Thanks very much, you’ve certainly helped me way more than I ever expected.”
“There’s one more thing Will. I’m not supposed to say anything about this, but since you had every legal right to publish that book, you should also have your lawyer meet with the university’s board of directors. A little pressure from the attorney might yield positive results.”
It did. Three days later Will Stander stood with his classmates and received his B.A. from the university. Five days after that he got a new contract from the publishing company that gave him a reduced royalty rate, but also commissioned him to produce five more books of Lloyd Larson’s work, with his own annotations to the original stories.
Seven days later he received a final piece of advice from his friend Professor Nelson.
“Will, you want more than anything to be a writer. You’ll do well financially by annotating the Larson books, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough to satisfy your creative writing urges. I want you to consider this: there are different types of writing. You may not possess the imagination of a fiction writer like Stephen King, but you’ve got more than enough skill to be a very competent journalist. You might find that investigative writing and reporting will be satisfying as well as challenging. I know some people at the Glove. Why don’t you let me set up a meeting?”
Will happily took the suggestion and interviewed the very next day for a spot on the Boston Glove. Taken on as a cub reporter he advanced so rapidly that in five years he replaced Howie Barnical as the director of the “Searchlight Team”, the very group that once had nearly destroyed his career.
For the end to this short tale we turn to another Will, considered by many to be the best writer ever. In the year 1604, the other Will wrote…
“All’s well that ends well”.
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