Things are getting testy between Gwyneth Paltrow and The New York Times.
Last week, an article published in the NYT Dining Section, "I Was A Cookbook Ghostwriter," insinuated that Paltrow's cookbook, My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness, was penned with someone's help.
A graphic of Paltrow's book with the caption "Gwyneth Paltrow's ghostwriter is Julia Turshen" is front and center on the page, and the actress took umbrage with the citation.
“Love @nytimes dining section but this week’s facts need checking,” she tweeted. “No ghost writer on my cookbook, I wrote every word myself.”
Yesterday, Julia Moskin, who wrote the original NYT piece, weighed in on the ongoing dialogue surrounding her article. She clarified that ghostwriting, as she used the term, is not when a chef has someone else come up with the food— that would be "ghost-cooking"— but when the author clearly has the assistance of an additional writer who helps them put the book together.
"... the routine work of wrestling hot, messy, complicated recipes onto the page in comprehensible English," is how she described it. "That work can include transcribing scribbled notes into logical sentences. Measuring out ingredients and putting them in order. Producing the routine bits of the book like the glossary and the guide to ingredients."
Moskin claims she was not insinuating that the ideas in the books— Paltrow's, for example— were someone else's. But even to that end, Paltrow's camp is saying she did the heavy lifting— the actual writing of the book— on her own.
“She wrote every word of the book and developed every recipe,” Paltrow's rep Stephen Huvane told the Daily News. "Julia [Turshen] was her assistant and is properly thanked and acknowledged in the book.”
