When Andrew O’Hagan agreed to ghostwrite Julian Assange’s autobiography in early 2011, he entered into a bizarre relationship with the WikiLeaks founder that did not result in the book either expected. O’Hagan, breaking his silence as a ghostwriter, paints a devastating, though not unsympathetic, picture of a man unsteadily at the helm of a new journalistic era. From the lengthy essay:
[H]e runs on a high-octane belief in his own rectitude and wisdom, only to find later that other people had their own views – of what is sound journalism or agreeable sex – and the idea that he might be complicit in his own mess baffles him. Fact is, he was not in control of himself and most of what his former colleagues said about him just might be true. He is thin-skinned, conspiratorial, untruthful, narcissistic, and he thinks he owns the material he conduits. It may turn out that Julian is not Daniel Ellsberg or John Wilkes, but Charles Foster Kane, abusive and monstrous in his pursuit of the truth that interests him, and a man who, it turns out, was motivated all the while not by high principles but by a deep sentimental wound.
Andy Morris, reacting to the essay, finds “one peculiar detail that sums up his subject’s profound strangeness”:
It isn’t Wikileaks lack of security acumen, the beyond parody working titles of Assange’s book (including Ban This Book: From Swedish Whores to Pentagon Bores) or his tendency to wear a Tesco tracksuit beneath his suit. Instead it is that Assange – the head of Wikileaks, scourge of international governments and self-declared third best hacker on the planet – eats with his hands.
“People in magazine articles say he doesn’t eat, but he had three helpings of lasagne that night and he ate both the baked potato and the jam pudding with his hands,” explains O’Hagan. “He turned from being very open and engaged to being removed and sort of disgusted.” Later in the piece O’Hagan is more blunt: “Julian scorns all attempts at social graces. He eats like a pig.”
This habit is telling for many reasons. It reveals Assange to be a man who clearly has absolutely no regard for what people think of him. A man who doesn’t care if there is a perceived “right way” of behaving or any other mitigating factors that have to be considered beyond your own pleasure. It reveals him to be a man who people rarely say “No” to. It shows him to be somewhat separate, even alien.
Paddy Johnson recommends a companion piece:
While very little of the biographical information that was supposed to be published in the autobiography made it into O’Hagan’s piece, some of that information can be found in the e-flux interview between curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and Assange. One gets a better sense of Assange’s personality as a hacker, (at least three paragraphs are dedicated to his teenage years hacking), and his values as informed by early web culture. O’Hagan’s interpretation of these values—Assange’s lauding of young hackers, for example, is seen as an inability to work with others as equals—only adds to the interview. Often, Assange represents himself exactly as O’Hagan describes him.
The two pieces are good companions. Readers get a clearer sense of the scope of Wikileaks projects and their relationship to the media. When described by Assange, we see that relationship is often shockingly sophomoric. When described by O’Hagan, we understand what’s informing Assange’s particular brand of vision, and why it can be so dangerous.
The Dish 