who wrote harry book

He had gained solid fame by writing the autobiography of Andre Agassi, Open, (Einaudi free style) unanimously considered a small masterpiece. That he was the author, or rather the ghost writer, was known only later, since there was no trace of his name in the book. But JR Moehringer has since become one of the most sought-after professionals in this particular publishing industry. And even if Agassi had not thanked him until later (arousing a small disappointment in him in this regard) his fame has grown exponentially and also consequently the commercial potential of his books (in Italy translated for Piemme ). Journalist of the Los Angeles Times after starting at the New York Times as a delivery boy, 58 years old, Pulitzer Prize winner, Moehringer is the Mister Wolf of the media-exposed characters, the one who solves the problems, in this case of writing.

When the news spread that she was working with Prince Harry on a book destined to create considerable confusion in the British royal family, it seems that at least a certain panic has spread at Buckingham Palace. Because he, a great fan of Ernest Hemingway and Alice Munro but also of Cesare Pavese and Italo Calvino, is not only a professional with all the trimmings, but someone who, endowed with a psychological penetration nourished by serious studies on the subject, knows how to get out of his «autobiographed» the best (or the worst, after all it is the same) of their experience, of their character, of their history. And he knows how to write them in an extraordinarily effective way, as a writing professional who is able to organize language and plot like no one else. Or at least, not as his illustrious clients could alone, who are certainly not illiterate but do not have, like him, the “profession”, those indispensable and difficult to categorize qualities which consist in transforming a list that is perhaps precise and yet boring in a novel or in a destiny.

«I read a lot of Freud and Jung – he explained about Agassi’s book -. The former helped me better understand why some people sabotage themselves by doing the exact opposite of what is in their best interests.” After Agassi, he became the star of this market, even if he confessed – he came to Italy, in Mantua, in 2013 – that he had been waiting for a long time for recognition, the answer to his fatal “say my name” that the tennis player had no desire to give in public, at least in the early days. Now Prince Harry has done it without problems, and his devastating autobiography is perhaps causing a crisis in the English court; while it captivates millions of devoted (so to speak) subjects of his British majesty, not to mention the Americans who wallow in this kind of stories happily, and all the others, including Italians, for whom the fascination of the ancient imperial court – one might say who knows why – is nevertheless very much alive.

Now, reasoning as skeptics, one would have to ask what on earth could matter to us about Prince Harry, his wife, his relatives, the elderly King Charles and in general the pumps of Buckingham Palace, the poisons that soaked him and still soak him , of a whole story that lies between kitsch and photo novel. The answer is good books, which raise everything to a fantastic journey into the imagination, in short, they make it literature or at least quality fiction, narration in the heart of the modern (or post-modern, you can choose). The epic of Agassi, a melancholic hero devastated by his father, or that of Harry, a supposedly slightly melancholic hero irritated by a court – he says – of whitewashed tombs: what could be better for dreaming? JR Moehringer is the master of dreams. His writings in the first person have earned him a Pulitzer Prize, but in the end they have not had a success comparable to his autobiographies. And perhaps there is a reason: if in The Tender Bar (one of the novels written «in his own», translated into Italy by Piemme with the title The bar of great hopes and from which a film directed by George Clooney was also made) narrates a solitary childhood lived behind the counter of a club listening to the voice of his father DJ on a radio, it is perhaps only in Open that the true figure of this situation of ambiguous orphanhood comes to overbearingly define itself, when the masked author makes the tennis champion that “the constant pressure, the ruthless competition, the total lack of supervision from adults slowly transforms us into animals”.

It seems that Moehringer manages to make others speak better than when he gives voice to himself (or as writers do, to that other than himself that they harbor within themselves) and this is quite a significant destiny; remaining between light and shadow, indeed being the shadow of another, is a somewhat cardinal condition that can satisfy, or perhaps give rise to a Luciferian pride: The “others” are in our hands, their truth is known to us alone, emerges thanks to our maieutics, takes shape thanks to our writing skills. Among the many things he explained to us in Mantua, he said, not without a touch of narcissism, that “looking at a man who questions himself more and more deeply is a gift”.