I started journaling on a film, Beasts of the Southern Wild. I began by writing, "this film is beautiful and richly imagined." Gee, I thought, that sounds awfully trite; I try to shy away from sounding like the barfy book blurbs that are everywhere, and then I started thinking about those blurbs. I read blurbs a lot; they are my way of sussing out a book on a shelf, particularly a new work. Because I am an admitted library addict, and I spent long hours haunting shelves for what is new to me or new in the world, I have my methods. With new books, with shiny new plastic wrapped covers, I immediately flip them over to see who has written what. Is there is a long list of what are (in my ever so humble opinion)
overly enthusiastic comments by relatively mediocre contemporary
writers? Do these look like blurbs done for pay, or as a professional favor by those who have a dog in that big fight with critics, critics who might have a tepid response to the work in hand? Or is there a quote from an actual book review, published in a relatively respected journal or newspaper? These operate like those silly film blurbs, of course, trimmed to trick. Sometimes the writing is just crazy.
Here's what I found this week, on the back of The Submission by Amy Waldman:
"The Submission is a wrenching panoramic novel about the politics of grief in the wake of 9/11."
"Wrenching panoramic"? Why do those go together, and without a comma? I'm also not sure about the "politics of grief," either, though it is a phrase that gets a lot of traction lately.
"Amy Waldman writes like a possessed angel."
What the hell does that mean?
Okay, to be fair, The Submission did have a blurb from both Booklist and Publisher's Weekly, and my husband, who was sort of reading it, said the subject matter was important and provocative. The book had a compelling premise (a 9/11 memorial commission) and many good ideas, AND it is on the NY Times notable books list so I did give it a try.* Here's my imaginary back cover quote: "Waldman has a cracking good idea of a story here, bursting with ideas about art, grief, and national identity and overflowing with the worst sentences imaginable." Here's one of those sentences: "As heads bowed, he glimpsed the part in Claire's hair, the line as sharp and white as a jet's contrail, the intimacy as unexpected as a flash of thigh. Then he remembered to think of the dead." That's the kind of thing you read over and again, wondering if you need reading glasses. Sure, we all get the jet reference here, but why not just use a 2 x 4 and hit me over the head? There are also obtrusive verbs sprinkled throughout sections of dialogue: "Claire snapped"; "observed Leo"; "Wilner barked." I tried to keep reading--it wasn't a difficult or slow read---but I kept obsessing over the syntax, rereading and rewording in my head so frequently that I couldn't keep track of the plot. Too bad. Writer Lorraine Adams is quoted on the back saying that "It's a literary breakthrough that reads fast and breaks your heart." Indeed.
In the middle of writing the above paragraph I stopped to google "book blurbs." As usual, I am late to the party. I don't care, but I did want to see what other people said. There was actually a debate on this over at the NY Times in March. I just read that novelist Colum McCann (loved his Let the Great World Spin but don't know if that will last) believes that the blurbs weren't actually for readers. I beg to differ, sir. Certain novelists serve as warning beacons to me, big signs that say "don't bother with this
one." For example, if there's a word on the back by Ann Patchett, who seems to be in a lot of places lately, that one usual
gets tossed out right away. Some novel, somewhere, recently had her
breathless quote: "Quite simply, the best thing I've read in a long
time." I am sure it wouldn't be for me. Had I found Patchett's novel, State of Wonder a bit more, um, wonderful, I might give her some credence. While I read the whole thing because, yes, I wanted to see what would happen, I just didn't believe the story or the protagonist. Despite Emma Donoghue's exorbitant praise on the paperback---"Perfect from first page to last...her masterpiece"---it wasn't perfect. While I'm at it, neither was Donoghue's much touted novel, Room, which I put down in less than five pages. "Utterly gripping" is the quote on the cover there, but I didn't believe the voice in this book was a five year-old. I've heard many people tell me how much they liked Room, or Patchett's Bel Canto but I couldn't get past the first ten pages of that one, either. I just didn't buy it. Not a single word. I didn't even like the characters names.**
Of course these blurbs are for selling. If you visit an author's website, there are countless reviews cut and pasted for effect. After I read enough blurbs for the above novels ("Astounding"; "Terrifying"; "Heart-stopping"; "Thrilling, disturbing and moving in equal measures") I start to doubt my own judgement. How could these books have been all these things? Did I miss something? (Nah.) If you love Patchett---and who am I to say you ought not?---then her recommendation might be just the thing.
Some book blurbs are works of art in miniature. The fabulous and recently departed John Updike seems to be on the back of every fifth book around, spreading his book critic cred like mustard on corned beef (sorry). Here's a particular favorite of mine, on the back of a Vintage Classics edition of Madame Bovary: "Madame Bovary is like the railroad stations erected in its epoch: graceful, even floral, but cast of iron." We could argue with Updike about his choice of the verb "erected" for this particular novel, but I couldn't agree more with the sentiment. I think.
Here's another one from Updike, on Lolita: "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." An arguable statement, certainly, absolute silliness, except that Lolita is an example of ecstatic writing, isn't it?
This one, on Milan Kundera's The Joke, has me scratching my head: "A thoughtful, intricate, ambivalent novel with the reach of greatness in it." So, Mr. Updike, does that mean you thought it worthwhile? That it might have been great, but didn't quite make it? I gotta love him for trying.
Moving on from Updike, here's a blurb I particularly like:
"I had only to read the two opening sentences to realize that I was once again in the hands of a superbly endowed storyteller." This is on the back of Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer. You know what? Those two sentences are fucking awesome. I do wonder, though, about the word choice here. I suspect that the critic, Robert Towers, (NY Review of Books) was having some fun, given Roth's oeuvre. Philip Roth is "superbly endowed" with what, exactly, Mr. Towers?
I could go on, but I actually want to read a book and finish that journal entry.
*I am still working my way through that list and discarding half of what I start. I may not be ready for 2012's list when it comes out.
**That was kind of nasty. I liked Truth and Beauty, Patchett's account of her friendship with writer Lucy Grealy, very much. It doesn't change my opinion of her novels, but saying this does assuage my guilt.
