The Ghostwriter and the Con Man a Life of Glossy Gossip

BOOKS Friday 42 i 1 December 2017 43 Fr day Fr king, Carl Icahn, along with the The ghostwriter and the con man A life of creamy TV anchor Diane Sawyer, mag magnate Malcolm Forbes, the TV writer Norman Lear, and the gossip columnist Aileen First Person famous con man, a swindler on a Mehle, aka Suzy”. Although the Richard Flanagan mammoth scale, who is awaiting glossy sheer amount of names dropped es (Chatto & Windus, £18.99) sentence and an unavoidable long may well leave you wondering: I av d prison sentence for his crimes. “Who are these people and why As a serious writer, he is high- should I care?” L Review by Allan Massie mindedly tempted to reject the gossip Yet if you simply relax and go nny O offer, which he owes to his closest with the turbo-charged (another J o m e n ove l i s t s a re friend from boyhood, Ray, a wild of Brown’s favourite words) flow, “putters in”, others “tak- man who has acted as the con then these diaries are a great deal ers out”. The former man’s gofer and trouble-shooter. ThE VAnity Fair Diaries: of fun. Brown is fascinating on the OnE minute drench you with incident But of course, he accepts; what- 1983-1992 ins and outs of putting out a maga- and information, and ever his reservations, it’s money Tina Brown zine and her enthusiasm for a good with… Swork on a big canvas; the latter he can’t afford to turn down. (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £25) story is winning (her tendency to Sally Rooney, value economy, of words and ef- The con man, Siegfried “Ziggy” promote male writers while sack- fects. Richard Flanagan, winner of Heidl, an Australian who speaks Review by Sarah Hughes ing women somewhat less so). author the Booker Prize three years ago with a German accent, is difficult. She’s also gloriously open about for The Narrow Road to the Deep More than difficult. On the one ou never know the way in which her triumphs are Where are you now and North, has been called Australia’s hand, he wants the book written, when you’re living consistently talked down – “I love what can you see? greatest living novelist, and is because he needs the payment in a personal golden the way he says ‘throwing money I’m sitting at my kitchen table. very obviously a putter in. promised in the contract. On age until it’s over,” around’ as if I am some ditzy girl Directly before me I can see the First Person is a rambling, garru- the other hand, he is quite unco- notes Tina Brown run amok with the budget” – and dishwasher, as yet unemptied, lous novel, telling a story which a operative. He says he remembers “Ywistfully at the end of her racy, honest about her struggles bal- and out the back door, the garden. different sort of writer, Ron Rash, nothing about his childhood or pacy diaries about her time as edi- ancing motherhood and work. for example, might have written at adolescence. If he produces what tor of US magazine Vanity Fair. Friend to the famous Brown with Meryl Streep in 2015 Getty ImaGes There is sadness, too, as the arriv- What are you currently reading? a third of the length. In this, he re- seems to be a fact, he retracts it VF (as Brown refers to it) be- al of Aids sees the parties replaced Henry James’s The Ambassadors. sembles Jonathan Franzen, and, almost at once. There are no true Wild boys Flanagan harks back to his narrator’s risk-taking youth, kayaking in Tasmania Getty ImaGes came a byword for the meld of breathless accounts of dinner and takes Brown to lunch and gives by a slow parade of funerals and like Franzen, lavish praise and big facts, merely stories, and he won’t high and low culture which pretty drinks parties, both attended and her the run-around, pontificating even the unstoppable Brown is Who is your favourite author sales have been his reward. even tell the stories. The supreme Ziggy is an emblematic figure. of their lives, in their youth. There of make-believe and denial. If you much defines journalism today thrown: literally in the case of one about politics before concluding: moved to moments of sombre and why do you admire her/him? The outline of the story is sim- con man is a solipsist for whom In a world in which governments is some very fine descriptive writ- can’t quite believe in Ziggy, this is and Brown was the editor who set notorious event involving the cur- “Look, any time you want to waste self-reflection. The author whose work I return ple. A young writer living in Tas- nothing beyond himself is real, and banks invent money out of ing and narrative passages that go because Flanagan presents him as the tone, transforming an unsuc- rent President, who, disgruntled some time… no interviews.” Ultimately, though, this is a per- to most often is Jane Austen. She mania is struggling to write his and who will even question or nothing, what’s the difference be- with a swing. There’s the sadness the faceless face of a world given cessful relaunch into America’s with a Vanity Fair profile, pours She has a wicked eye for small fect primer to the gaudy excesses just seems to understand how novel. He is poor, has a wife and deny his own reality. tween them and the con man who of lives gone wrong or torn apart, over to self-invention and fantasy. most buzzed-about magazine a glass of wine down the back of details and enough affectionate of 1980s culture. “This is what I extremely funny life is. young daughter, and there are It is, very evidently, a novel of fleeces them? Was the money he the desolation that is the conse- So it’s an absorbing novel, stuffed full of exclusive interviews, the author, Marie Brenner, before mockery to leaven the lengthy lists appreciate most about the city at twins on the way. He supports our time, a 21st-century novel stole ever even real? quence of family break-up. intermittently very enjoyable too. eye-catching covers (including, quickly vanishing. of names which populate these night, the life force of New York Describe the room where himself with odd jobs. Suddenly which recognises that in the age There’s some wonderful writ- Yet the strength of the novel Yet I can’t avoid the thought that memorably, Demi Moore naked There are lovely cameos, too, pages – some more well-known to aspiration, wanting, wanting to be you usually write… a publisher makes him a propo- of the internet, reality is no long- ing about Tasmania and the wild rests in its mordant intelligence, it would have been better had when seven months’ pregnant) from a young Boris Johnson (“an a British readership than others. seen,” Brown writes in Septem- I try to work in the spare room, sition: $10,000 to ghost-write the er objective; it is whatever you kayaking exploits which the nar- in its recognition that the world Flanagan taken more out and and the sort of stories that the in- epic shit. I hope he ends badly”), You would have to be an obses- ber 1985. The same could be said upstairs, at a desk by a window, autobiography of Australia’s most choose it to be. rator and Ray enjoyed, at the risk today is essentially Ziggy’s, one stuffed less in. crowd gossiped about. Jackie Onassis (“I felt if you sive fan of New York culture in the of the author: it is her joy in her but more often I end up back at If that all sounds like so much cleared the room and left her 1980s to unpick sentences such as job, her delight at being ringside the kitchen table, where forms of hyperbole, then blame it on the cu- alone, she’d be in front of a mir- “Vanity Fair’s success designated in this moment, and, most of all, procrastination are close at hand. mulative effect of reading Brown’s ror screaming”) and an easily me a great seat at Alice’s table her sheer chutzpah, which keeps ALSO RELEASED diaries, which are stuffed full of distracted Warren Beatty, who next to the aggressive takeover you turning the pages. Which fictional character most resembles you? being reissued on the back meditative captions and playful A few years ago I’d have said JD A Field Guide to ThE of City on Fire’s success. cross-references to other entries WInter Life In ThE Garden What makes Salinger’s Franny Glass, who is North AmericAn Where City on Fire is (“An erratic Maturity pattern Karl Ove Knausgaard Penelope Lively Britain great? having a nervous breakdown on Family Garth Risk Dickensian in scope, A Field characterises the Midlife Crisis: (Harvill Secker, £16.99) (Fig Tree, £14.99) It’s a question the couch in Franny and Zooey. Hallberg (Vintage, £12.99) Guide, focusing on two modern- it may remain a manageable size Coffee that exercises But I think I’m just slightly too day middle-class families in the for years, only to reach its stature table our finest old now for that routine to be as Garth Risk Hallberg pulled off Long Island suburbs, is a svelte in a few turbulent days”). Norwegian writer Karl Ove Now in her mid-eighties, choicE artists, from charming as it once was.

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