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Profanity in Blurbs?
The Literary Saloon thinks it's uncovered a can't-miss blurb for any publisher willing to translate Thomas Bernhard's Meine Preise:
While we're not big fans of blurbs we would, however, also urge that the US/UK publisher include one very prominently on the cover of the book — from Maxim Biller's review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung:
Das Arschloch Thomas Bernhard, und das sage ich, obwohl ich ungern schlecht über Tote rede, das Arschloch Bernhard hat ziemlich sicher nur ein einziges gutes Buch geschrieben. Dieses Buch erscheint erst jetzt, obwohl er es schon 1980 geschrieben hat, und es zeigt, was für ein Arschloch er war
[The asshole Thomas Bernhard -- and I say this even though I dislike speaking ill of the dead -- the asshole Thomas Bernhard, it's fairly certain to say, only wrote a single good book. This book appears only now, even though he already wrote it in 1980, and it demonstrates what an asshole he was.]
This raises an interesting question: undoubtedly this would get some attention, and a large part of the appeal hinges on Biller's use of the term asshole, but would a profane blurb create the right kind of attention or the wrong kind?
I can't say that I can recall ever seeing profanity in a blurb before (not even in a positive sense, like "a fucking good read!"), although Bernhard would seem to be a good choice to break the profanity line. But I do worry . . . if a publisher does go profane, and if it does work out well, will that usher in a new era of potty-mouthed bookcovers?
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Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
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Enrique Vila-Matas Interview
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
Slightly milder but similar:
“I really wanted my second book to be sharp and funny and snide and soulful and brave and heartbreaking and true. Unfortunately, that bitch Ann Leary wrote it first. I’d hate her guts except that I want to be her best friend.” -Cynthia Kaplan, author of Why I’m Like This
I can recall one very profane but positive paperback blurb, when Blanche McCrary Boyd called Norman Mailer’s “Harlot’s Ghost” “one of the best fucking novels I’ve ever read.”
Check out Forrest Gander’s blurb on the back of the New Directions paperback of Bolaño’s “The Romantic Dogs” — “…With Bolaño we encounter not only ‘fist-fucking’ but ‘feet-fucking’ in a poem that also mentions Pascal, Nazi generals, Shining Path bonfires, and a teenage hooker…” It’s one of my all-time favorite blurbs.
Matt,
Now that’s a real interesting case . . . is it sensationalistic to be quoting profanity from the book itself? Good find.
Jim Dodge’s FUP has on its new british edition a quote from The Times that reads “This novel is fupped uck!”. Dunno if that counts.
Blurbs are often annoying prattle. Ditch them or make them memorable I say.
I liked a gig poster that under the name of the band said “Overrated” – although it turned out that Overrated was the support band.