Spare

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "The Half-Madness of Prince Harry," Peggy Noonan says the following about the Duke of Sussex:

"He is careful throughout to say he is telling his story in order to help others, those who've struggled with mental illness or been traumatized by war. It is hard to know another person's motives; it can be hard to know your own. But I don't think this book is about others. I think it's about his own very human desire for revenge, to hurt those who've hurt him. And to become secure in a certain amount of wealth. And to show his family and Fleet Street that their favorite ginger-haired flake could make his own way, set up his own palace, break free, fly his own standard, become the Duke of Netflix. This book is classic Fredo. 'I can handle things. I'm smart. Not like everybody says, like dumb, I'm smart and I want respect!'

It's all so contradictory. He says he wants reconciliation but writes things that alienate, he says he reveres the monarchy and isn't trying to bring it down but has gone beyond removing bricks from the facade and seems to be going at the bearing walls.

I close with a thought on privacy. Prince Harry violates his own. He tells us too much about himself and others.

Once there was a reigning personal style of public reticence about private pain. You didn't share it with everybody, and you didn't use it for advantage or as a weapon. I have known pain, you must bow before me. The forces of modernity have washed away the old boundary between public and private. It isn't good. It's making us less human even as we claim to be more sensitive.

But fully mature people still have a sense of their own privacy, they keep to themselves what is properly kept to oneself. Privacy isn't some relic of the pre-tech past, as I said once, it is connected to personhood. It has to do with intimate things – the inner workings of your head and heart, of your soul. You just don't give those things away. Your deepest thoughts and experiences are yours, held by you; they are part of your history. They are part of your dignity. You share them as a mark of trust. This is true intimacy, not phony intimacy but the real thing.

If you tell all the strangers your secrets what do you tell your intimates?

A friend said the other day: 'Most of the forces of the world are pushing toward exhibitionism and calling it honesty. The assumption is if you keep things to yourself you have something to hide.' But you aren't reserved out of shame, you are reserved out of a sense of your own value and self-respect. And it doesn't leave you alone; it means you are part of something larger, a whole world of distinct souls.

You shouldn't violate your own privacy, not for attention or admiration, and not for money. It's a mistake. And it won't heal you."

Prince Harry reportedly paid author and ghostwriter Jay Moehringer $1 million to write Spare. Will Moehringer come to regret writing it as Tony Schwartz did for writing The Art of the Deal for Donald Trump?