Andersen says things like "What did interest Barack were Ayers's proven abilities as a writer," which might make you think that Ayers wrote the book. In the same paragraph he also says "But it was the tone Ayers had set in his latest book -- To Teach -- that Barack hoped to emulate."
Does that mean that Obama was imitating Ayers's style in what he threw together or that Obama wanted Ayers to write the book for him based on his notes and tapes. It's ambiguous. The answer may lie somewhere in between. At any rate, what's actually in Andersen's book doesn't correspond exactly to what you see on the Internet.
Later on, Andersen says "In the end Ayers's contribution to Barack's Dreams from My Father would be significant -- so much so that the book's language would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers's own writing." It's likely that Andersen thinks that Ayers actually did write the book but doesn't want to come out and say it for legal reasons. It's also possible that he doesn't have real hard evidence that Ayers actually wrote the book.
I don't know. I'd bet that some ghost-writing and a lot of editing were involved. But the idea that a thirty-something Obama simply couldn't throw together some rough manuscript on his own because the 18 or 19 year-old Obama had trouble with language or because he couldn't do so a few years earlier really doesn't work for me.
Whatever Ayers's contribution was I wouldn't go so far as to say that Obama's input was confined to tapes and notes. I don't know, but as I said, politicians and lawyers leave themselves some plausible deniability, some sliver of truth that the can hold onto to convince themselves that they aren't outright lying.
I was talking about a post-Harvard Obama not being able to write.
More later, God willing.
Now, back to the subject of whether the post-Harvard Obama cd write his way out of a wet paper bag. First, is he sufficiently proficient w grammar to tackle a book-length project? Well, here’s a very sm, limited list of just a few of his grammatical triumphs:
‘“Well, first of all, I do continue to believe that the greatest threat to United States security are the terrorist networks like al Qaeda …”
“Obviously, our efforts to continue to go after extremist organizations that would do harm to the homeland is uppermost on our minds.”
“Good morning, Marines … Diplomacy and assistance is also required to help the millions of displaced Iraqis.”
“Our families, our businesses, and our long-term fiscal health demands that we act and act now.”
“Each of these institutions are full of honorable men and women doing important work that helps our country prosper.”
“I know, I like Frank, we’ve had conversations between Frank and I.”
“… my conversation with Sergeant Crowley, there was discussion about he and I and Professor Gates having a beer here in the White House.”
“I have to say that nobody was more surprised than me about winning the Nobel Prize for peace.”
These grammatical blunders represent only the tip of the Obama iceberg.’
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/08/16/NYT-Ripped-Bush-Grammar-mistakes-ignores-obamas
But when it comes to writing itself, here is my personal favorite:
“Law week, two men, Richard and Michael, walked into you office and asked for your help.
You learn that they are a monogamous, gay couple who have been living
together for the past ten years. Both men are successful architects, and after devoting the past decade on their respective careers, they have now decided that they want to marry and raise children together.”
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/exclusive-investigative-reports/is-obama-stupid-and-lazy/#HmyULtfeOfT2FV2B.99
Now pause for a moment, x, and reflect on just how bad the writing in this sample is. Where to even start w it? Consider, the men walked into your office ‘law week’ yet ‘you learn’ is present tense. So you didn’t learn ‘law wk’; you somehow, miraculously, learn in real time what was said to you ‘law week’. [The term for it is ‘tense-shifting’, and it’s an embarrassingly basic mistake. He should have learned better, if he needed to, in his first yr at Occidental.]
Next consider the painful wordiness/clumsiness of the phrasing. Cd you use more words to describe the same scenario? Maybe, but it wd take a Herculean effort. Cd you use less? W the greatest of ease, and w even greater effectiveness.
There’s more, much more, but face it, the above writing is the product of a literarily dysfunctional mind. The person who wrote it has no conception of even the most basic principles of good writing. Indeed, you might even say he has a ‘gift’ for wretched writing, since writing this bad doesn’t come easy. [And please, spare me the pathetic line that it’s just slapdash writing for a legal exam. Writers write. They write when they do prose, memoir, correspondence or simple notes. I’ve read examples of ‘slapdash’ writing by some literary greats. It’s a wonderful, amazing experience. You hear their voice—the same one that made them famous, won prizes, etc.—even in the briefest notes. They write well b/c they write well. It’s part of who they are. Just as Astaire wasn’t graceful and coordinated on stage and a klutz when walking down the street, so writers don’t turn it on and off. Good writers write well, period.]
One thing we can say for sure. The writer of ‘law week’ is not the author of Dreams. The writing in the one cd not be more different than the writing in the other. The writer of Dreams knew what he was doing [even if you don’t like his style, which I don’t]; he used the English language to tell an effective tale [at least for the intended audience] and won accolades for the effort. The writer of ‘law week’ skirmished w the English language and lost...badly.