Last week, the New York Times published a piece by Julia Turshen describing her life as a cookbook ghostwriter. In it, she tells how what she thought would be a dream job actually held "more humiliations than [she] imagined." She says that sometimes her work got minimal recognition, while sometimes it got none at all.
Many real-world cooks have wondered at the output of authors like Martha Stewart, Paula Deen and Jamie Oliver.... Rachael Ray alone has published thousands of recipes in her cookbooks and magazine since 2005. How, you might ask, do they do it?
The answer: they don’t.
Ms. Turshen goes on to say that while many of the chefs she worked for were brilliant, they'd never written down any recipes, and they lacked those easily-summarized points of view and touching personal stories that media outlets like the Food Network require.
They just wanted cookbooks with their names on them, and Ms. Turshen complied.
Though the article doesn't specifically mention otherworldly sylph Paltrow, it's accompanied by a photo of her latest cookbook and the line, "Gwyneth Paltrow's ghostwriter is Julia Turshen."
Which, in the overly-sensitive world of celebrity branding, is like saying, "Gwyneth sucks dog cocks in hell."
Furious, Ms. Paltrow threw aside her decoupage and took to Twitter. "Love @nytimes dining section but this week's facts need checking. No ghost writer on my cookbook, I wrote every word myself."
"She wrote every word of the book and developed every recipe," echoed her spokeperson. "Julia was her assistant."
Oh. Okay. Gwynie hired a ghostwriter to not write for her. I get it. Now, though, I've got to go. I found a hunky masseur on Craigslist and he's coming over to not lay a finger on me.
