The concept of an "unauthorized autobiography" is intriguing. Since an autobiography is by definition a life story composed by its subject, the left hand must not agree with what the writing hand is doing. Instead of a memoir, it's a not-me-moir. It's less an autobiography than an ought-not-to-be-ography.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the subject of a new book called Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography. Anna Dowbiggin, who brought the release to my attention, wrote: "The constant reference to 'autobiography' when Julian Assange is not the writer is just foolish."
The book is definitely an odd duck, since the words are largely Assange's but he objects to their selection. British publisher Canongate paid him a huge sum of money for his story, to be pieced together by a writer from interviews conducted with Assange. When Assange read the result, he backed out of the deal but said he was unable to return the money. So the publisher went ahead with the book.
Ghost-written "autobiographies" are at least a century old. In Memoir: A History, Ben Yagoda writes that actors Charlie Chaplin and John Barrymore and dancer Isadora Duncan purported to publish autobiographies in the 1920s that were in fact written by ghost writers, so called because the writers were uncredited – invisible, like ghosts. Lovely term. I picture them haunting the bookstores.
That such books are nonetheless called autobiographies remains jarring. Sarah Vowell was struck in 1995 by a remark on the U.S. radio program The Liz Wilde Show. "Wilde announces her guest lineup for this evening," Vowell wrote in Radio On: A Listener's Diary, "including 'the guy who just wrote that Tom Cruise autobiography.'"
Sometimes the subjects thought twice. Aviator Charles Lindbergh was so unhappy with the "autobiography" stitched together by a ghost that he wrote his own book instead. Actress Simone Signoret did the same decades later, giving her book one of the sweeter titles on record: Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be.
Even the phrase "unauthorized autobiography" is old hat. Daniel Handler, writing as Lemony Snicket, produced the 2002 book Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography. Comedian Tommy Chong wrote the 2008 book Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography. A 2009 stage musical was called The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown ("Things couldn't be clearer/ Your life's in the rear-view mirror").
And, since you must be wondering whether such a thing exists, a comic strip created in 2007 about a turnip named Otto and a cat named Carl is called, yes, Ottobiography. It appears to be authorized.
Elsewhere on the cultural front, Monday night's episode of the naval criminal-investigation show NCIS committed a common spelling error. On a computer screen displaying a bank balance, the word "withdrawl" appeared several times. None of the characters commented on this, perhaps because they were preoccupied with a murder. You have to wonder about some people's priorities.
The confusion did, however, invite the question of how withdrawal and drawl came to be.
Drawl, which describes the slow, vowel-stretching enunciation of language, is itself a perfect candidate for being drawled. Its origin is not certain, but the safe money is on its having entered English in the late 1500s from the Low German or Dutch word dralen, meaning to linger or delay.
Withdrawal appeared in the 1800s after people had spent the previous two centuries saying "withdrawment." Draw is uncomplicated enough, having entered Old English as dragan (pull), from a Germanic root.
The wild card is "with," which since its first appearance in Old English has had conflicting meanings. The primary sense at the start was "away from" or "in opposition to." The secondary sense was "alongside." The companionable sense: He walked with his friend. The opposing sense: He argued with his friend.
Withdrawal, then, is a pulling away. Withdrawl is a pulling away very, very slowly.