On Joining Oulipo by Accident
With increasing amusement I’ve been watching my diss of Nicole Krauss’s blurb wind its way through the Internet, now landing at Laura Miller’s Salon.com books column.
(For the record, the book in question, David Grossman’s To the End of the Land, looks like a great read and has been recommended to me by a few readers whose judgment I hold in far higher esteem than any blurb. I have hopes to read it later in the summer, and the fact that it’s a translation only sweetens the deal.)
Miller makes some fair comments about blurbs, including that they’re incredibly difficult to write well, are more used to indicate an author’s friends/endorsements than anything about a book, and are often political/strategic in nature.
All of this is completely true, as is the fact that many in the industry hate having to ask for/give blurbs. Heck, I promote books myself, and I hate having to scrounge around for blurbs. Its truly a weird sort of thing, where anyone with any knowledge of publishing “knows” that it needs to be done, just as much as they know what a painful, paradoxical process it is.
My point in digging at Krauss’s blurb wasn’t to hate on her for attempting to take on a difficult job. (Difficult, but not thankless–there is a definite benefit to having your name on the cover of one of the season’s major literary books, and being associated with an author like Grossman.) Nor was my point to try to knock a book that, by most indications, is indeed going to be a great read.
Rather I wanted to pause and briefly point to the kind of mock-worthy things that publishing can push itself into. Judging by the response, a lot of people share my unease with blurbs. I don’t know the answer. I think a mutual blurb cease fire on the part of every publisher in existence would be a great thing, but that isn’t going to happen. And, in fact, I will admit to a certain utility in knowing that Author I’ve Never Heard Of is friends with and possibly admired by Author Whose Work I Like. But if blurbs are a necessary evil, we should at least keep them to a reasonable length. The longer the worse, as Krauss’s blurb demonstrates. And if you happen to have the chance to write a blurb, you probably want to let it sit for a day or two and make sure it doesn’t sound too overwrought.
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I don’t buy Miller’s point really, that Krauss is just doing Grossman a “favor,” and probably “preferred not to” do it. For a book of this stature, I think the blurb works in reverse, and Krauss actually gets the favor done.
Grossman certainly has more literary capital than Krauss, and I think she benefits more from being associated with him than the reverse. Even more reason it shouldn’t have been so cliche.
There’s one piece missing from this puzzle: Assuming, as The Independent does, that this is a case of author naivete (an unconvincing argument, since even new writers know enough to avoid New Age blather), where was Knopf/Random House in all of this?
Where was the wise, staying hand in Knopf/Random House publicity to say “no”? This wasn’t just a lapse in Ms. Krauss’s good taste (in her expression of her appreciation, obviously, not in the appreciation itself) — it was also a serious lapse in judgment from a major publishing house. The publicity department didn’t merely excerpt it and use her stuff — they ran it on the cover of advanced reading copies in large type, presumably to sway the reviewers on the receiving end of these galleys.
I, too, have been blurbed by publishers from my reviews in major daily papers — but that’s an important difference. My credentials were vetted, possible conflicts of interest discussed, and final reviews were sifted by more than one editor.
That would seem to be one answer: use more newspaper reviews for blurbs. That doesn’t nix the problem altogether, but it reduces the chance of collegial backscratching, and guarantees more jaundiced eyes will catch purple prose.
Two problems, of course: 1) Newspaper book sections are an endangered species; 2) Timing; it would be hard to get newspaper reviews in time for the publishers to put them on the jacket.
[...] // It’s nice to see translations getting some attention from the larger houses – as Scott noted, Knopf is publishing David Grossman’s “To the End of the Land” soon, and just the [...]
My copy of “To the End of the Land” arrived this afternoon and just before finding this blog, I mentioned to my wife the fulsome praise to which you refer. (And indeed this is a good example of “fulsome praise.” I will save it for future reference.) Only one problem — that is how I felt about Grossman’s “Be My Knife.”
Len Grossman [No relation.]