back to article Assange™ pens world's first unauthorised autobiography

Julian Assange's autobiography is released tomorrow – despite the objections of one Julian Assange. Canongate is the publisher for the first instalment of the memoirs of the WikiLeaks founder. A deal worth $1.5m was signed in December, and Scottish novelist Andrew O'Hagan was dispatched to Ellingham Hall in Norfolk, where …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Hmmmmm...

    "a vivid portrait of a driven but notoriously mercurial idealist bent on moulding the world in his own belief of absolute transparency"

    Right unless you are talking about the funds Wikileaks collected for Bradley Manning and his legal defense. Then the transparent walls disappear real fast for some reason.

    1. Steve Knox
      WTF?

      Absolute Transparency

      or, apparently, his own autobiography.

    2. Silent but Deadly
      Headmaster

      Just how...

      does a transparent wall disappear and would anyone notice? And if they did, wouldn't that be a more open environment?

      Perhaps they are replaced?

  2. kain preacher

    You took payment so shut up, unless you can give4 it all back at once .

  3. BasevaInc
    Mushroom

    Ha!! payback is a bitch!!

    Pay back is bitter!!

  4. Scorchio!!

    Re: Hmmmmm...

    ' "a vivid portrait of a driven but notoriously mercurial idealist bent on moulding the world in his own belief of absolute transparency"

    Right unless you are talking about the funds Wikileaks collected for Bradley Manning and his legal defense. Then the transparent walls disappear real fast for some reason. '

    Don't forget his anger at the release of 'his' information by other organisations. *His* information no less; transparency only if he says so, and even then probably only through his little paywall. What a pratt.

  5. Taters
    FAIL

    Perfect

    The founder of wikileaks now is against the release of his own information.

    Oh irony, you taste so sweet.

  6. banjomike
    WTF?

    Not the world's first ...

    although Assange's version might be as interesting as "Cheech and Chong The Unauthorised Autobiography" or "Steve Nugent by Unauthorised Autobiography", no not THAT Steve Nugent, but certainly not an original idea.

    1. Andus McCoatover
      Windows

      Misread..as usual.

      "Cheech and Chong" - Did you mean " Cheek and Thong?". Yeah. Thought you did.

      1. banjomike

        No, I meant "Cheech and Chong"

        1. Scorchio!!
          Thumb Up

          Cheech and Chong

          'Up in smoke' would look good on the spine, with Jules telling Daniel Domscheit-Berg "You are verrrrry beyoooootiful". Oh yes. I can see it all now, right down to the Assange-mobile being made out of, ahem, substances.

  7. Andrew-Winning!
    Holmes

    If he gets royalty payments ...

    ... someone should upload the manuscript to the web and release it for free, unabridged, a chapter at a time.

    1. Ian Michael Gumby
      Facepalm

      C'mon... that's theft!

      You wouldn't want to be the one who leaked Julian's book to the net, now would you?

      After all, he owns the rights and that it would be wrong to leak his private and privileged information.

      Say it aint so...

      1. graeme leggett Silver badge

        But...

        It's for the common good.

        The people have a right to know what those with power and responsibility are up to.

        (it's too early for me to be funnily ironic)

    2. TeeCee Gold badge
      Happy

      Even funnier....

      Upload it to Wikileaks and watch his head explode.

    3. Martin
      Thumb Down

      It's a nice idea....

      ...but that would not hurt Assange (who has had half a million pounds in royalty advances), it would hurt Canongate (who are currently half-a-million out of pocket).

      1. Scorchio!!
        Thumb Up

        Re: It's a nice idea....

        "...but that would not hurt Assange (who has had half a million pounds in royalty advances), it would hurt Canongate (who are currently half-a-million out of pocket)."

        To me his responses to the matter in press substantiate something interesting that I have noted for a while now. His upbringing evidently did not include 'rule following' and, being a 'pro-social' feature of co-operation in human life, rule following - conforming to social conventions, obeying laws - is what prevents people from tearing one another apart, reneging on commitments, and so on. Indeed, if you read about his early history (as described by his mother) you will find that her idea of creating a questioning mind was to tell him to reject such patterns of rule following. Cleckley long ago identified the phenomenon, and much of clinical research is derived from his early writings.

        In short, do not trust people who reject 'pro-social' behaviour, laws, conventions, the sorts of things that protect you from hurt. Those who do these things may be glib (appear to communicate meaningfully but in fact offer only a salad of meanings that only stand up to superficial scrutiny), charming and to support the good things in life, but the chances are that they will do only harm. They have no difficulty in benefiting from such rules, and then - as with Canongate - breaking from them, to their benefit and to the harm of those to whom they are committed in a contractual relationship.

        Much of the current imbroglio could be his way of a) benefiting from the relationship, knowing that the material will be published irrespective of his supposed opposition and b) retaining his 'street cred' (does 'plausible deniability' ring a little bell here?) for the benefit of those people who have thought him to be other than a lying capitalist, whose idea of selling the secrets of state bodies to gullible, dewy idea electronic idealists, who claims to 'own' secrets stolen from another country, massive salary and other cash raising schemes, all the while treating Bradley Manning as a disposable asset.

        Oh dear. This sounds very much like the sort of thing that Julian Assange (TM), knight in shining armour, supposedly opposes.

      2. Ian Michael Gumby
        Devil

        @Martin

        The money he received in advance supposedly went to his lawyers.

        If he were smart, he would had saved the money and faced his accusers in Sweden.

        But he's a childish boy who believes he did nothing wrong and refuses to 'man up'.

        By not buying the book and just getting it free off the net, you deprive Julian of any potential royalties along with proving the point that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. And in this case the sword is the belief that everything should be free, open and transparent, even if you don't want it to be.

        Julian doesn't want the book published because it was the first 'mirror' that he's looked in to and he didn't like what he saw. So he wants to hide it. Too bad, but he's made himself some sort of reality celeb.

  8. CmdrX3
    Childcatcher

    Can't wait...

    I'm sure it will be a totally uninteresting read, much like the man himself. I think I'll give this one a miss.

  9. kain preacher

    I have a friend that says this is nothing more than a smear campaign by the CIA.That the book is full of lies. If they real wanted him there are better ways to frame him up. Accuse him of forcible rape . Dead hooker in the hotel room.(perhaps a good lawyer might get him out of the). Accuse him of possession of child porn( the whole there is no smoke with out fire thing.) No I think if the CIA were going to set him up they would place a fuckton of heroin in his car . Then they can claim the wiki is funded by drug money. Oh and since the taliban sells heroin , Jules and wiki supports terrorism .

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @kain

      I have a friend who has a friend who wears a tin foil skull cap under his baseball hat.

      Ignoring that this guy is usually pissed and smells of urine, he swears that Julian has left the UK and is in the US. And that Julian really is an agent of the CIA. Wikileaks was just a way to establish his cover....

      Now who are you going to believe?

      1. Peter Simpson 1
        Coat

        RF protected baseball cap

        No longer does your FoaF need to remember both tinfoil *and* baseball cap.

        These folks, in addition to shielded boxers or briefs, offer a shielded baseball cap at only US$29.95, item #F210: http://lessemf.com/catalog2/70.pdf

        I believe there may be a discount if you're outfitting an entire team.

        No need to thank me, and mine's the one with the conductive lining, thanks!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @Peter

          Sorry but the FoaF is particular about his baseball caps. He wants to craft them to his specifications and to make sure that 'they' (you get to figure out who he means by 'they' or 'them' cause I haven't a clue...) ... as I was saying, he wants to make sure that 'they' don't play any tricks on him.

          Plus also he wants the hat to reflect his personal style and blend in to the environment. Right now my friend tells me he's sporting a bears hat. Not sure if he's also a Cubs or a Sox fan, I'll have to ask.

  10. jake Silver badge

    "total transparancy"? Really?

    So the guy has no curtains in his (borrowed) abode; no door to his toilet, and a plate-glass window to the outdoors in his shower? And his banking & etc. details are available for all and sundry to peruse? And his own personal computer is available for all to access from anywhere on TehIntraWebTubes[tm]?

    No? I didn't think so ... what a total fucking twatdangler.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      @jake: concur completely

      And he has stupid hair

      1. jake Silver badge

        @enigmatix

        Hey! Leave his mother's father out of it ... He can't control the genetics of his hair!

        1. jake Silver badge

          That's an odd "thumbs down" ...

          Did the "voter" honestly not know that human males almost always get their hair from their maternal grandfather?

          (I don't really give a rat's ass about "thumbs", up or down, here on ElReg ... but every once in awhile one pops up that intrigues me ... )

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As a side note....

    There is a line in the movie Shrek: as Lord Farquhar addresses his troops prepare for batle against the ogre. It always makes me chuckle and think of the Wikileaks / Bradley Manning situation. It goes something like this:

    "This is a fine and noble deed you are about to undertake. Many, if not all of you will not survive, but that is a risk I am prepared to take."

    OK, so I might not have the exact quote, but you get the gist......

  12. tiggertaebo
    Coffee/keyboard

    Irony!

    Delicious Irony!

  13. JohnG

    Irony

    It would be funny to see Assange and his lawyers go to court to say how wrong it is to publish other people's information, against their wishes.

  14. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Boffin

    Hmmmm.

    I have to wonder whether the decision to try and stop the book being published by Canongate wasn't just another one of A$$nut's last minute attempts to go with a better deal somewhere else. After all, he did the same with the newspapers.

  15. Lamont Cranston
    Happy

    I'd think very highly of Canongate

    if they sold enough copies to recoup the advance, then dumped the released the manuscript on the internet, if only because it would deprive Jules of any income, giving him a small taste of Manning's situation.

  16. Ken 16 Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Canongate beat off competitors to sign up Assange

    I hope the pages aren't stuck together

    1. Scorchio!!
      Happy

      Re: Canongate beat off competitors to sign up Assange

      "I hope the pages aren't stuck together"

      Do you think he might have been "wearing" it then?

  17. Dodgy Pilot
    Megaphone

    You sign a contract. You get paid a huge advance. You spend the advance. You then decide you don't want to play any more but won't refund the cash.

    Assange is a grade A+ super-prat and deserves all that he gets thrown at him.

    I'll wager he was a spoiled bed-wetting bullied little brat when he was a kid but I'll bet that's not in the book.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Whack job

    Assange is just a whack job looking for publicity and he got it.

  19. Patrick R
    Stop

    Anonymous, pressure the banks !

    ...to block his accounts,so he can't refund the royalty nor cancel the deal. All in the name of transparency and freedom of speech of course.

  20. Gerardo Korndorffer
    Childcatcher

    Autobiography or "Autobiography"

    Since he did neither write it nor authorize I hardly find the term appropiate, (even though he did have the thing started in the first place).

  21. Andus McCoatover
    Windows

    I'll buy this tome. Hope it's hardback.

    We can't keep the bloody front door open when the wind's blowing....Might be big enough to do the job.

    For Heavens' sake, it's probably got enough hot air in the book to blow the fuc*ing thing shut!

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Canongate says it will honour royalty payments to the six-fingered Australian"

    Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

  23. Stevie

    Bah!

    Assange is a Johnny-come-lately and is far from the first to pen an unauthorized autobiography.

    I believe that honor goes to Lemony Snicket.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like