Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 November 10

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November 10

Celebrity autobiographies and memoirs that were not written by ghostwriters

What are examples of celebrity autobiographies and memoirs that were confirmed to not be written by ghostwriters but the actual people themselves? Our article on autobiographies only mention that it's more common for them to be written by ghostwriters but does not give any counter-examples. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 01:36, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

In his day Lionel Terray was a celebrity in France. He was considered to be too uneducated to have written Les Conquérants de l'inutile (even that he was illiterate). However, after his death a manuscript in his own handwriting was found. Our article on Terray discusses this. Thincat (talk) 10:37, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

If he was illiterate, how would anyone know what his non-existent handwriting would look like? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:23, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

He wasn't illiterate. You shouldn't believe all he gossip you hear. Thincat (talk) 09:14, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

For starters, from you! :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:13, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

It will be rare that there is conclusive confirmation that no ghostwriter was involved. Even though Winston Churchill is known to have employed a ghostwriter, no one seriously doubts that he wrote his memoirs himself. So there is no reason to offer a confirmation – although, should one be needed, I expect handwritten material is extant. Published confirmation can only be expected after serious doubts have been raised and made public, and the allegation is provably false.  --Lambiam 11:08, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

The publishers of Bruce Springsteen's memoir Born to Run assured us that he wrote it all himself. Also, not sure whether he counts as a celebrity, but Philip Glass wrote his memoir Words Without Music himself. --Viennese Waltz 11:35, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• There's also a continuum between "ghostwriter" and "editor", and where on a scale a particular work falls there is likely to be some room for disagreement. --Jayron32 13:11, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

David Lloyd George wrote his War Memoirs himself, longhand, in pencil. He had started by dictating to (I think) A. J. Sylvester (on a train, if memory serves), but got carried away. He did have documentary research and some drafting help, from Sylvester, Malcolm Thomson and Frances Stevenson, and submitted chapters on military tactics to Basil Liddell Hart for comment, but as George Egerton wrote in Egerton, George W. "The Lloyd George War Memoirs: A Study in the Politics of Memory". The Journal of Modern History. 60 (1): 55–94. JSTOR 1880406. "If Lloyd George had an ideal team of assistants in researching and drafting the memoirs, he nonetheless remained very much in personal control of the writing. To the historian reconstructing the drafting process in the literary records left by Lloyd George-from the earliest outlines and sketches penciled in the author's notebooks, through subsequent drafts fleshed out with greater detail and documentation, to the proofs read by Hankey and Baldwin - the hand of Lloyd George is apparent at each stage. While one of his secretaries or assistants might submit the first draft on a topic he had outlined, how this would be used, if at all, remained very much under the author's control. This was once made dramatically clear to Liddell Hart when an argument was concluded by Lloyd George shouting, "Who's writing these memoirs you or I?" DuncanHill (talk) 13:29, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

This is just hearsay, but I'd definitely class Alan Alda's Never Have Your Dog Stuffed in the not-written-by-a-ghostwriter category. You can practically hear his voice in your head reading it. Chuntuk (talk) 16:22, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

The google search "did not use a ghostwriter" (using the quotes) is fairly fruitful, providing sources for claims by Gwyneth Paltrow for her cookbook/memoir, astronaut Rick Searfoss for his leadership book/memoir, and Sidney Poitier’s autobiography. You might want to continue the search to page 2 to find more! 70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:23, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• On a tangential but not unrelated note, speechwriters usually do all the writing of speeches, and their politician employer delivers them as their own words, perhaps with some minor changes of their own. The question is: whose speech is it? Normally writers are content to remain in the background and let the polly get all the credit. A noted exception is the public falling out between two formerly close friends Paul Keating and his speechwriter Don Watson over the 1992 Redfern Park Speech. Watson claims Keating didn't change a single word of what he had written. Keating claims the speech evolved out of dozens of conversations the pair had had over a long time. Of such things are friendships made and destroyed. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:54, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Both Morrissey and his Smiths bandmate Johnny Marr wrote their own autobiographies. [1] [2] PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:01, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

The Potempa Murderers

Who were the Potempa Murderers, and what happened to them after their release? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 12:29, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Of the three links shown for references, the second and third don't work, and the first is worded the same as the article. Hard to tell who stole from who. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:35, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

https://ere now.net/ww/stormtroopers-new-history-hitlers-brownshirts/1.php may be of some use. (Wikipedia is blocking the link for some reason; though I can't figure out why, remove the space in the URL)--Jayron32 12:59, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

@Jayron32: Thanks, the link is blocked as Erenow appears to be a copyvio site. It does give us these details "the miner and SA squad leader (Scharführer) August Gräupner (b. 1899); the pikeman and NSDAP member Rufin Wolnitza (b. 1907); the electrician Reinhold Kottisch (b. 1906); the SA troop leader and timekeeper (Markenkontrolleur) Helmuth-Josef Müller (b. 1898); a former police officer named Ludwig Nowak (b. 1891); and the miners Hippolit Hadamik (b. 1903) and Karl Czaja (b. 1894). They also arrested two innkeepers who had played a pivotal role in the crime: the SA man Paul Lachmann (b. 1893), who was also the municipal administrator (Gemeindevorsteher) of Potempa; and Georg Hoppe (b. 1889), who ran an SA tavern in the nearby village of Tworog. Four other participants, including Paul Golombek, a local butcher and probably one of the main culprits, had already fled" and that "On 22 August 1932 the Beuthen special court sentenced five of the attackers to death: Lachmann because of ‘incitement for political homicide’ (Anstiftung zum politischen Totschlag) and Kottisch, Wolnitza, Gräupner, and Müller for ‘homicide committed out of political motives’. Hoppe received a prison sentence of two years for ‘abetment to dangerous bodily injury’. The remaining three culprits (Hadamik, Czaja, and Nowak) were acquitted". It doesn't seem to say what heppened to them after release (apart from being "acclaimed jubilantly" by the Upper Silesian press. DuncanHill (talk) 13:11, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

No, but now that you know their names, you have additional search terms with which to research the matter. --Jayron32 16:21, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

This also gives the culprits' full names and occupations. Four were miners, one electrician, two innkeepers, one "timekeeper" (presumably in a factory or mine) and a policeman. Alansplodge (talk) 17:29, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

huge dude next to Jason Ravnsborg

[3] Who is the huge dude to Jason Ravnsborg's left? Or is Ravnsborg himself unusually small? A quick web search to find his height was unsuccessful, and image search didn't find other other pics of him standing next to anyone. Just wondering, thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 16:16, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

This is rather self-evidently caused by perspective. The person to Jason Ravnsborg's right is not huge, he's close. --Jayron32 16:20, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Is the OP Father Dougal? DuncanHill (talk) 16:27, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Jayron, thanks, I think you are right. The guy's elbow is occluding Ravnsborg's shoulder rather than the other way around. It originally looked like Ravnsborg was closer. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 17:57, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Kate DiCamillo full name

I'm curious that sources like Encyclopedia Britannica give Kate DiCamillo's full name as "Katrina Elizabeth DiCamillo", but it's only mentioned in a few sources. Can anyone confirm if this is indeed correct, or is it a case of citeogenesis? Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 20:54, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Her web site has a link to her facebook page.[4] You could possibly ask her or her publicists through it. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 00:00, 11 November 2021 (UTC)