Two attacks against our specialty, in one New York Times Book Review!

For speechwriters, reading The New York Times Book Review yesterday was no idle pleasure. The issue contained not one, but two attacks on ghostwriting, practice and principle.

• Before explaining why he's afraid of ghosts, essayist Joe Queenan kindly acknowledged there are occasions when ghostwriters are useful—even ideal. To wit: when "one dashing figure, who has the brains but not the leisure to write a book, secures the services of a genius with time on his hands. The nominal author provides relevant facts, figures, and anecdotes … the ghostwriter does the heavy lifting. But nobody ever officially admits that a ghostwriter is involved because that gets up the public's nose."

Most ghosts, on the other hand—Queenan goes after those who co-wrote recent books by Tim Russert, Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich—only confuse audiences, who wonder which words were the star's, and which came from the mind of an obscure ghostwriter.

"Cynics may object that ghostwriters perform a valuable civic function by shielding the public from the authentically dimwitted voices of those they channel. To their way of thinking, no one would actually want to read a book written in Charles Barkely's own words; no one would want to read the unedited David Lee Roth; no one could possibly machete all the way through an unghosted Rush Limbaugh book. I disagree."

He has a point, of course. I'm glad, for instance, that Lincoln did not need nor have a speechwriter as he contemplated his routine ceremonial remarks at a battleground. Much of the blandest literature in the world—and little of the very greatest literature—has been written by ghostwriters of one stripe or another.

But what about the everyday, the workday world of corporate and political speeches, business books and op-ed pieces—how would the everyday world benefit or suffer for a lack of ghostwriting help?

There is only one way to clearly contemplate a world without ghostwriters: A general ghostwriter strike, for one year. Who's in?

• More painful yet is a new book called Ghosting, wherein a ghostwriter betrays her client and her former writing specialty. For 15 years, writer Jennie Erdal wrote books, articles and speeches for the Palestinian businessman, publisher and author Naim Attallah.

Over the years, according to Sarah Lyall, who interviewed both Erdal and Atallah for the Book Review, the close collaboration gradually became "complex and fascinating and in many ways absurd." Eventually, it got too weird, and Erdal felt she had to get out. And after she did, she wrote this book largely decrying the whole experience.

"Passing something off as your own when you haven't written it and couldn't in a million years have done it is not honorable behavior," Erdal told Lyall. "Nor is colluding in it for 15 years, especially if you care, as I do, about language. Why give your words away?" (Umm, you mean sell them, right?)

It is easy and proper for us to condem Erdal for making her pile and then, book deal in hand, turning on the client she made it from and insulting the very method by which she made it. But a book deal is only a book deal; life is long and money is short. And so I'm comforted by my hope that someday, Erdal will have to try to get another ghostwriting client. Here's hoping that's every bit of the steep uphill climb that it should be.

But at the same time, we are writers and not lawyers, and we should listen closely and carefully to these broadsides by fellow writers. We should be haunted by what we should be haunted by.

"I did and did not feel responsible for the words on the page," Erdal writes about the experience of ghostwriting. "I did and did not feel that they belonged to me; I did and did not feel that I could defend them in my heart."

Is it advisable to work in a job that requires us to feel and not feel, all at once? It's a question all writers—not just ghostwriters—ought to ask themselves occasionally on a Monday morning.