A former ghost takes to the light

IT’S no secret how hot the literary scene in London can be. Reviewers are more outspoken; the press exhibits the same fascination with writers and publishers that we shine on starlets and movie moguls. And everyone loves a good controversy.

The latest flap is over Jennie Erdal’s tell-all tale of her almost-20-year career with publishing personality Naim Attallah (think Donald Trump with good manners and literary savvy), which has parted the waters on either side of London’s Shepherd Market, where many of the bookish have their well-appointed offices and where Quartet Books, Attallah’s empire, is housed.

“Ghosting: A Double Life,” Erdal’s nuanced and captivating memoir (released in the U.S. last month), is her effort to explain the forces that led her to abandon a perfectly good career translating from Russian and acquiring Russian titles for Quartet’s list in exchange for the shadowy life of a ghostwriter.

Attallah, whom Erdal calls Tiger in the book after a resplendent skin on the wall of his office, hired Erdal in 1981. He was, at the time, chief executive at the luxury-goods store Asprey, owner of several public relations and consulting firms, publisher of Quartet and the Women’s Press (which publishes Angela Davis and Alice Walker, among others) and the owner of several magazines, including the Literary Review.

In those years, Erdal writes, she penned letters, speeches, newspaper articles, a dozen works of nonfiction and two novels in his name. The setup allowed her to work in Scotland, where she lives with her three children, coming to London only when necessary. The London office, as she describes it, was a showcase for some of the youngest, prettiest baronesses, heiresses and all-around society girls in town.

Attallah, who is 74, called them all “Beloved,” spanked bottoms and commented on figures, Erdal writes. The favorite at any given time, she writes, was called “La Favorita.”

For Erdal, who calls the relationship “part symbiotic, part parasitic,” things began to sour while the two worked on the second novel, “A Timeless Passion,” spending weeks at a time at Attallah’s home in the Dordogne. Collaboration on the sex scenes proved particularly thorny for Erdal, who in the past, especially while writing the first novel, “Tara and Claire,” had deferred to Attallah’s point of view. His desire in the second novel to present a male character whose mistress would have an orgasm as he made love to his wife thousands of miles away struck Erdal as more than a bit preposterous.

A true parting of the ways began, writes Erdal, when “I found myself raiding my own knowledge and experience of the world rather than the author’s.” Faking fiction, she writes, is a lot like “faking sincerity.”

Erdal grew up in Scotland in a house where “much was done for show.” Her parents cared a great deal about what the neighbors thought, yet her mother surreptitiously sold underwear from her home. Erdal was forced into locution lessons to rid her of her beloved Scottish accent. No surprise that she became a translator, which she describes as a kind of “disappearing act” but also “an abiding love affair with words.”

“Ghosting” is a wistful book, the story of a woman who lost herself for a time. You grow up, she writes, and “for a long time you forget who you were.”

The book begins with a love letter supposedly written by Erdal to one of Tiger’s mistresses. “That letter was never written or sent,” Attallah says. “But reviewers in London were nasty about it. That caused me a great deal of pain.”

Attallah also resents that in the book, Tiger, who is obsessed with time, wears three watches. “Absurd!” he says. “I only wear two!” Erdal describes a scene in which the two are on a plane and Tiger asks the flight attendant for a glass of water because his “wee-wee” is yellow. “Can you imagine?” he gasps into the phone. “I who have run companies ... why would I think that anyone was interested in my wee-wee?”

Erdal is amused and often perplexed by the moments in the book that have most offended her former boss. Attallah thinks they are symptomatic of her confusion between fiction and nonfiction.

He compares the book to an opera: “The basic story is there, but then it becomes larger than life. There are elements of truth in the book, but there are many embellished stories.”

Attallah, who says he encouraged Erdal to write the book and who read the first two chapters before they were published, says frequently that he values loyalty in his relationships, and he was stung by Erdal’s portrayal of Tiger as illiterate and an overdressed buffoon. He says that while she did write the novels, the nonfiction -- including a very well-received anthology of interviews with more than 300 famous women -- was a collaborative process in which Erdal prepared him for the interviews and helped “collate” the material.

“I was egged on to do the novels,” he says, “because her husband had left her and she had a family to support. I gave her half of the royalties. I wanted her to put her name on the books, but she said no because she felt I was more exposed so it would get more reviews. It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

Erdal seems genuinely disappointed in Attallah’s reaction to the book. She has written him several letters and cards since its publication but has gotten no response, she says. At home in Scotland, she says, “I don’t want to duck the question of betrayal, but there’s more to it. A lot of writing is about unlocking secrets you have inside yourself. There are huge emotional costs to lying, which is a loaded word. The levels of pretense multiplied as the ghosting became more extreme. I wanted to take a look at the psychology of that.”

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Something out of Dickens?

She also seems to miss her old boss (and it must be said that Attallah spoke fondly of their time together as well). “This is someone,” she says, “who could ring me up about a Christmas issue in which he was supposed to list his favorite books and say to me, ‘What were my favorite books?’ ” While Erdal feels she got to know Attallah quite well, she believes she remains a mystery to him.

“In many ways, he lends himself to being written about,” she says. “He’s such a Dickensian character. I colluded to the extent that I wanted to please him, just as I wanted to please my parents.” Erdal explains that she found herself in a place she never meant to end up, a position that was not sustainable.

In the book, her new husband finally blows up when Tiger calls for the umpteenth time while they are having a dinner party. The “Beloved stuff,” Attallah’s behavior toward the young women in his office, was also off-putting to Erdal. “Everyone talks about how much he loves women, but if you didn’t go along with the Beloved stuff you were considered a spoiler. It made your life more difficult. If someone left to go to another job he considered it a betrayal.”

Attallah just published the first book of his own three-part memoir, “The Boy in England,” in London (there is not yet an American publisher). A prequel to the memoir, “Old Ladies of Nazareth,” was published last year to good reviews. “It’s important for him to prove something to himself,” Erdal says, “but it’s pitiful; it’s as if he were trying to prove something he can’t quite prove, and he can’t see that. His ego is something fantastic, and it makes him vulnerable.

“I never,” Erdal says in response to Attallah’s claim, “called him illiterate. Denial runs deep -- he believes in his own myth and puts such energy and ambition into it. He is obsessional but also generous, charming and charismatic. His faults are all tangled up with his virtues. He did believe that he was creating the writing. I colluded in that.”

Attallah is quick to give credit. “She did most of the writing. I did the plot. I’m no Shakespeare,” he says of his memoir.

Erdal is surprised by how wounded Attallah is. “He’s spent his life in publishing and must respect the right of authors to tell their own story. Many people, including Blake Morrison in the Guardian, have pointed out that if he could just be calm and take a long look at it, he would see it’s not so threatening.

“You can be fond of people you love and still see them clearly,” says Erdal, who is on her way to spend a few weeks in the Hebrides away from the chatter in a seaside cottage where she will work on her next book, which she won’t discuss.

A few days ago, she sent a birthday card to Attallah, who says, a little ruefully, that he received it. He says that he is not going to sue for libel, in part because it will make him look bad, “the big man trying to crush her,” but also because, as he says, “we shared a lot. A relationship is sacrosanct.”