In the film "The Wife," Glenn Close plays out the pain of being the appropriate helpmate.
The characters are Joan and Joe Castleman. They met when he was a professor and she a student at Smith College.
SPOILER ALERT
In their marriage, her core function evolves into ghostwriting the novels her husband of 40 years gets credit for - and adulation. The latter includes young women eager to have affairs with him.
Aside from several flashbacks, the setting is Sweden, where he receives the Noble Prize. The wife Joan and his unhappy son accompany him there. So does a writer doing an unauthorized biography. He tries to manipulate wife and son to spill the beans on narcissistic Joe.
In addition to ghostwriting, Joan has the responsibility of making sure Joe takes his medications, eats right, and is on time for appointments.
In Sweden, Joan is treated with deference for being Joe's wife. But she has no identity of her own.
Just before the end of the film Joan tells Joe she is leaving him. Yet, she jumps in to save him when he has a heart attack, which proves fatal. She also tells the biographer that if he puts in the book that she may be the actual writer of Joe's novels she will sue.
So goes the complexity of being a ghostwriter. There can be a mixture of satisfaction of a job well done, loyalty to the "client," and resentment.
Those of us who are ghostwriters understand exactly why Joan chose that shadow presence. She knew herself enough to recognize that she didn't have what it takes to be the big cheese. Simultaneously she also realizes she has the talent to help build the fame. Through that agreement Joan and Joe are able to make a nice life for themselves and their son and daughter.
But the tradeoff can wear down a soul.
When it does, as with Joan, one option is to walk out. Had Joe recovered from his heart attack she probably would have still left. She had had it.
Another option is to leverage that role for some bits of star power. John Kennedy's ghostwriter Ted Sorensen managed that.
Also the ghostwriter can leave that career path behind and do something else. Former ghostwriter for Lyndon Johnson Jack McNulty went on to head public relations at GM. McNulty had hired me to be a full-time ghostwriter at GM.
It wasn't until I launched a blog in 2005 that I found out I had something to say in my own voice and that people wanted to hear it. Since then I have stepped out of the shadows.
However, I have held onto ghostwriting. It never bothered me that someone else was receiving the credit for my thinking and writing. Ghostwriting for executives at Chevron was the first well-paying job I ever had had. I took the money and stayed in the profession.
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