Cubfan,
According to Harper Collins, an editor cannot fill in a story with people, places, events or happenings. They can make the writing more readable with adjectives and adverbs. That is not writing. Morrow had writers on staff but none were assigned to the book. Willey was not a writer, he was an editor. In a publishing company such as Morrow in the 1950's you must understand everyone was unionized. Editors didn't write and writers didn't edit . It wasn't something like the book submitted doesn't seem too interesting so we'll have the janitor make up some neat stuff to put in it. Everything was structured, everyone had their specific tasks and if the book needed writing a writer was assigned to do it.
Harper Collins explained if Morrow had written the work they (Morrow) would have retained the copyright. They didn't, Sims Ely kept the copyright so right there tells you who wrote the book. In the publishing business 41% of the writing is considered the property of the publisher and you can believe if a company writer is assigned to write, there will definately be 41% written and or changed. Thats the way the publishing business works.
From what I learned, 13 chapters were submitted. The book was so short, a 14th and final chapter had to be submitted. That 14th chapter dealt completely with the death of James Cravey and ended the book on an extremely strange note. Had the book ended with the 13th chapter, it would have flowed into the ending. The Cravey chapter (14) made a right turn to the 13th chapter and broke that flow completely.
I thought T Glover's talk was interesting, but not informative in the least and actually raised even more questions that went unanswered and caused more confusion of the issues. That is why I decided to get in touch with Morrow and Company.
I think there are only two possibilities. Either Sims Ely actually did write the book himself, or someone wrote it for him. But if someone wrote it for him, it definately was not someone at Morrow and Company. That would leave me with the question, who did write the book ?
There are some other things I learned about the writing of the LDM book, something with implications that I don't want to go into until I read what T Glover puts in his book(s) about Ely and the book, The Lost Dutchman Mine.
