Julian Assange's ghost writer breaks silence on failed autobiography
WikiLeaks founder a mercurial character who could not bear his own secrets, according to writer Andrew O'Hagan
Esther Addley
The Guardian, Friday 21 February 2014 15.00 EST
... The book deal ultimately collapsed, O'Hagan writes, because "the man who put himself in charge of disclosing the world's secrets simply couldn't bear his own. The story of his life mortified him and sent him scurrying for excuses. He didn't want to do the book. He hadn't from the beginning."
Assange, he writes, was persuaded to agree to the autobiography by his lawyers who said the huge sums on offer would cover his mounting legal costs. He had initially been enthusiastic about the project, telling his ghostwriter that he "hoped to have something that read like Hemingway", and suggesting ever more avant garde styles for the book to take, such as writing the first chapter with one word, the second with two, and so on.
But O'Hagan reveals that as the deadline to deliver a manuscript approached, Assange was "totally shocked" at the prospect of his own story being told, describing people who write about their family as "prostitutes" ...
Though Assange denounced its publication, he told O'Hagan that he was covertly encouraging sales and tweeting links to its Amazon page. That strategy failed: despite its huge advance and publicity, the book sold fewer than 700 copies in its first week, a spectacular publishing failure ...
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/21/julian-assange-ghost-writer-autobiography-wikileaks