Unauthorised Julian Assange autobiography due out

[alp227]

Source: BBC News

An autobiography of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is being released.

It has been published despite the fact Mr Assange broke off his involvement and tried to cancel the project.

According to the publishers, Mr Assange signed a contract on 20 December 2010 with Canongate Books to write a book "part memoir, part manifesto".

After sitting with a ghost writer for more than 50 hours of taped interviews, he decided he wanted to cancel the contract.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15009028

[Bumblebee]

1. In some ways, poetic justice...

[Hissyspit]

4. How?

[msanthrope]

10. Indeed. They have 50 hours of his droning on, so Assange can't claim he was misunderstood....

well, he probably will, anyway.

[bemildred]

2. Well, it's not really an autobiography then, is it? nt

[msanthrope]

8. He sat for 50 hours before trying to cancel his K. Of course, he'd already spent the

advance by then.....

[bemildred]

11. There is nothing new about ghost written autobiographies where the subject changes his mind.

What is new is calling a biography that the subject objects to an "autobiography". If he does not agree to it, then it's not his writing.

[frazzled]

3. I guess he didn't want to be quite that transparent

But I find the term "unauthorised autobiography" to be hysterically funny. It's pretty much an oxymoron, isn't it?

[Sirius1]

15. yes. lol

What comes around.

[quakerboy]

5. so.. is it

a whitewash of the truth behind a horrible man, or a smear fest against a true international patriot?

Seems like one of those things where noone's likely to end up happy with the result.

[zalinda]

6. Again we will probably find that a man with a message

is going to be smeared with his private life. What you do to help the public good, is one thing. It is quite another to put someone's private life out there, to some how invalidate his public life.

This tearing down of a person, just because you can, is bullying. But, when you are a public figure, apparently it's sanctioned.

zalinda

[Bumblebee]

7. But it was his idea to write this autobiography with a ghost writer

and get a contract for it -- was it not?

[msanthrope]

9. Um--this book is based on 50 hours of interviews Assange gave to the co-writer.

He was onboard, then tried to renege....

I suspect that rather than being smeared, Assange is simply going to sound like the prat he is.

[zalinda]

16. I suspect that Assange saw the way

the 'book' was shaping up, by the questions that were being asked, and decided that it was not going in the correct direction. It's his private life, and he should be able to decide what gets told of it. Many a celebrity have had books written by them and the facts were some what embellished from what really happened.

My mother was an avid reader of the tabloids. I remember reading the story of an incident that happened with a celebrity in all 4 of my mother's tabloids. Not one of the stories were the same. Each had their own twist and 'witnesses' to the story, so depending on which tabloid you read, the only thing that you knew that was true, was that the celebrity was there, at the location, because everything else was different.

zalinda

[Wait Wut]

12. In the spirit of transparency...

...I'm sure he won't have an issue with this book being published without his approval.

[cliss]

13. A slight correction:

Biography = a book that someone else writes about J. Assange.

Autobiography = a book that Mr. Assange writes about himself.

This book is a biography.:smoke:

[avaistheone1]

14. thank you

[Robb]

17. That skirts the issue of a ghost writer, which is why it's still an "autobiography"

...at least to the publishing world. I do, however, agree with you.