Pretend I’m Not Here by Barbara Feinman Todd

‘So there it is, my life in an eggshell: my desire to be a writer, my desire to please, my complicity in my own disappearance, and my meek protest against that very fact.’

I picked up this book to meet one of the categories for a reading challenge I am participating in. Yes, I was looking for a book written by a ghost writer, and Barbara Feinman Todd certainly fits the bill. Yes, she was Hillary Clinton’s ghost writer for ‘It Takes a Village’. She also worked with Bob Woodward, first as a research assistant and then researching ‘Veil’, his book on the CIA. While I’ve read both books, I have not read two other books she assisted with: Carl Bernstein’s ‘Loyalties’ or Ben Bradlee’s A Good Life’.

Here in Australia, I was unaware that ‘Feinman Todd’s involvement with Mrs. Clinton made headlines when the First Lady neglected to acknowledge her role in the book’s creation, and later, when a disclosure to Woodward about the Clinton White House appeared in one of his books.’. But I can imagine how these events (especially the disclosure to Woodward) haunted Ms Feinman Todd. Discretion is surely paramount for ghost writers.

Ms Feinman Todd wanted to write novels but realised that she had a better chance of earning an income as a ghost writer. A realistic, but I imagine difficult, decision.

‘But I had built up a solid reputation as a book doctor, and this town would never have a shortage of people who wanted to “author” books but couldn’t or didn’t want to write them themselves. I had to make a living. It wasn’t realistic to think I could do that by writing novels, even if I managed to get one published.

Was it time to make my peace with being a “craftswoman” as Hanan so kindly put it? What did it mean that I had gravitated to work that required —or allowed? —me to be silent and invisible?

Was it really so different from the fiction I longed to write?

Was it time to give up on my fiction, even my own voice, and be grateful for what I had: a steady income and a comfortable life?’

For me, Ms Feinman Todd comes across as an observant and thorough researcher, as a thoughtful writer who was trying to find her place in a world full of urgency, egos, and testosterone.

Barbara Feinman Todd retired in 2017 after twenty-five years of teaching at Georgetown University.

‘Until the lion has a historian’ goes the adage, ‘the hunter will always be the hero.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 16 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘Memoir/Biography’.