What’s in a name, a word? Blur, blurt, lubbr, blubbr, blab. “Blurb” is a 20th century coinage originating with Gelett Burgess (or perhaps Brander Matthews), who intended it to mock excessive praise for a book. Most people in the publishing-and-reading world immediately recognized it as a raspberry aimed at boosterism, payback, mendacity and all the worst of motives and methods involved in the promotional blurb. Now there’s even an online vanity press called Blurb, and I wonder how much thought (and wit) went into that christening. The practice of endorsement goes back a fur piece – medieval at least, the Monty Python era, and the Arabic word (according to Dr. Google) for the practice is taquiz. Surprisingly, the negative connotations intended by Burgess have, in the current climate, almost disappeared, but it’s still possible to detect them, like the moon’s full wafer, evident even when only a sliver catches the light.
At their best, blurbs are minute reviews written by authorities and peers who genuinely admire the book in question and who aim to be accurate, enthusiastic, fresh, concise. A blurb can be a brief standing ovation in print.
So it’s a minimalist critical genre, and where’s the harm in that? I’ve written blurbs for books, and my books have been blurbed. Sometimes publishers have handled the request, and on other occasions I’ve personally asked another writer, usually someone I believed (or hoped) to be an admirer of my work, to read a manuscript and provide a comment, but the older I get, the less excited I am about the prospect or the product, because in the tangled little subculture we call the literary world, the wine has been watered down (I hope that’s water.). I’m not guiltless in all this, but I’m trying to follow Ish’s recommendation that we examine our thoughts and behavior, no room for turning a blind eye or obfuscating.
The blurb can be payback or pay-forward. It can be another “like” or “poke,” one of the many tendrils of that unkempt garden that nurtures literary cliques, schools, networks, posses, mutual grooming societies and allies. In the poetry world, everyone from the presses that publish our books to the few stores that sell them ask us to promote ourselves with wild abandon, and it’s only natural to recruit confederates to share the load.
But it’s unnatural, as well. Because the literary profession is so tangled (writers also edit, teach, review, give readings, administer programs, direct presses, award prizes, blog), as well as write, and publishers can muster a lot of leverage themselves. A request to blurb a book can come with substantial subtext, much of it built around the question, “What if I respectfully decline?” The word “inveigle” comes to mind. Perceived duress can cast almost as hard a shadow as real duress, and who wants to be a refusenik in a small and imperiled subculture threatened by everything from “Survivor” to “Toy Story,” Gears of War 3, Sudoku, scrapbooking, hopscotch, texting. “occupying,” Farmville?
It would be unfair to quote any of the specific blurbs that give me pause. The selection process would be extensive and exhausting, and I probably no longer own the books sporting the worst offenders, but here are some facts that really put the stink into the word “blurb.” Many blurbs are formulaic, as anyone can see. Equally evident, many are hyperbolic. Many are muddy or glib or so exclusively descriptive that the writer’s desire not to take a stand could not be more obvious. Some blurbers just can’t disguise their lukewarm response to the book, others can’t conceal their own stake in the book’s success. It gets worse. I’ve heard writers disparage another writer’s work, then blurb it. I’ve heard writers dismiss books they’ve already blurbed. Quelle fromage.
If we must have blurbs – and perhaps we must – then is there some way to keep accounts, govern, just simply keep count? Some writers already refuse the gambit themselves, asking for quotations from reviews of earlier work or passages from the book on the back cover. Perhaps the editor who decided to publish the book – or the referee who advised it . . . no, that gets too murky quickly – should just write a paragraph explaining what made the work seem worthy.
Although I believe less might be more in the blurb world, I’m not exactly asking anyone to open a website that publishes all blurbs by year, arranged alphabetically by blurber’s name. It would likely be a thankless enterprise, but it would be a public way at least to hold me to what I’ve promised myself to do – not agree to blurb any book I don’t believe is exceptional, one of the ten or twelve best I’ve read in the past two or three years, and never to blurb a book briskly or for reasons other than the quality of the writing inside, absolutely . . . no exceptions allowed. . . starting now. A fool’s errand? I’ll get right on it. I wonder if anyone else will admit it’s time to take that pledge. Or am I just flat wrong?
Exit, pursued by a bear.
