Me, myself and I: Ghost-writing

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Ghost-writing

Howard Phillips "H. P." Lovecraft (1890 –1937) was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction.

Lovecraft's guiding literary principle was what he termed "cosmicism" or "cosmic horror", the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. Lovecraft is best known for his Cthulhu Mythos, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works often challenged the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Humanism and Christianity.

The central theme in most of Lovecraft's works is that of forbidden knowledge.
In his late teens, Lovecraft got involved in national amateur journalism, a popular movement of the time whose members wrote essays, criticism, poetry and fiction which were then published in amateur journals.

Lovecraft quickly rose to prominence, eventually becoming president of one of the two rival organizations. His early grounding in the classics plus a thorough command of English made his contributions highly sought after.

Soon, his friends were encouraging to take up editorial and revision work. His self-image of a New England gentleman bred an extreme distaste for 'commercialism,' so at first he worked for free. As he moved into his twenties, a growing awareness of his dismal financial situation forced him to charge as well as advertise.

L. Sprague de Camp [1], in his biography, Lovecraft [2], states that the author originally charged a ridiculously low 1/8¢ per word. De Camp reproduces Lovecraft's rate card from 1933 showing he had raised his rates considerably. Unfortunately, not everyone paid their bills, and he would not stoop to the un-gentlemanly act of dunning those clients, so that he often made even less per word.

The majority of his work was correcting punctuation and grammar or metrical mistakes. One of his first regular clients was Rev. David Van Bush [3], who remained a steady client until the mid-1920s, hiring Lovecraft to ghost-write books such as Pike's Peak or Bust, Practical Psychology and Sex Life, Grit and Gumption, and Character Analysis (How to Read People at Sight.) Lovecraft chafed at the inane material and at Bush's success, but as Bush provided his most steady income stream for many years, Lovecraft had to maintain the relationship.

Over the years he worked briefly as a collection agent, ticket taker at a movie theater, and at grading school papers. He always came back to ghost-writing.

Lovecraft continued to write his own stories, but the frequency slowed almost in inverse proportion to the growth of his fame. Ghost-writing continued to provide as much as two-thirds of his annual income even as his financial situation continued to deteriorate. By the time of his death in 1937, he was eating little more than canned chili, several cups of coffee and little ice cream per day.

Does a cold-reading psychic in New York have a ghost-writer in Toronto, Ontario? Do both of them hear from “Francine”?

[1] Lyon Sprague de Camp (1907 –2000) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors. He "was widely regarded as an imaginative and innovative writer and was an important figure in the heyday of science fiction, from the late 1930's through the late 1940's."

In 1939, he married Catherine Crook, with whom he collaborated on numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, beginning in the 1960s.