Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2007/08/05/concerto_in_blurb_minor.php
Sunday, August 5, 2007
A lot of you have been writing in asking, “How is Social Justice for Tweens coming along? Can I see the proofs, possibly?” The answer is (a) horribly and (b) absolutely not. The reason for (b) is just that I could lose my sweet publishing contract, which includes three other books after this, not including a tie-in workbook/coloring book/activist Mad Libs bonanza. The answer for (a) actually has nothing to do with the main text which I wrote over a single weekend this spring while zonked on amphetamines. No, what it all comes down to is blurbs.
My agent, Daniel Parris, known as “The Mongoose” in the publishing world, is adamant that Social Justice for Tweens start out with at least sixteen pages of rave blurbs, just effervescing and spluttering and sounding less like professionals soberly evaluating a book than unhinged Pentecostalists speaking in tongues and tearing at their own flesh. Daniel, by the way, is the man. He invited a dozen left-wing bloggers over to his apartment, poisoned the crab dip, and withheld the antidote until they promised to deliver the blurbs. He pulled Robert Reich off the street into a van and basically just pounded him with a bag of oranges until he got hip to the blurb. For reasons unrelated to book publishing, he visited a roundhouse kick on Arianna Huffington’s Grecian patoot. A droll fellow with impeccable comic timing, he.
So what’s the problem? Hey, how about this, Eisenstein: what isn’t the problem? The blurbs are terrible. Take this example, from the lead singer of the Decembrists:
What if instead of force-feeding geese to make their livers foie gras-ready we force-fed schoolchildren the wisdom of Cate Lunt to make their souls ready for a better world? Now there’s an idea I’d like to rock out to.
Can’t you tell that Daniel got that one through blackmail? And doesn’t it sound like his lawyer wrote it or something, in like five seconds? (The proles don’t eat foie gras, idiot. Probably, there’s some secret message in there about how I’m a bad, bad person. Yeah, I’m shaking in my fair trade socks, loser. So, we’re not going to use it.) This just goes to show that the method of blurb extraction counts. But even the happily offered ones are all wrong, wrong, wrong. Take this example from Gore Vidal:
No brachial part of the assault on the Bush-Cheney junta, Ms. Lunt serves up a decoction sure to singe the tongues of the new American Caligulas.
Well, I know the old fella’s on his way out, but, seriously: “Brachial”? “Junta”? “Decoction”? “Caligulas”? Of course I know what those are. But is he even using “junta” or “brachial” correctly? Will my target audience (oppressed tweens) even appreciate those words? My publisher wanted that to go on the cover, but luckily the Mongoose got to him. I e-mailed Gore:
Dear Mr. Vidal, I like the blurb! It’s soo great. Do you think you could add something on there, though? Maybe something simple, like, “Lunt is the best young writer in America”? THANKS Cate (p.s. write back!)
The old man hasn’t replied. He had better have shuffled off the mortal coil because no one gives Catherine Elizabeth Lunt the silent treatment. No one. Well, one did, and I hauled him before the International Criminal Court, and I believe he’s only one of like two guys they’ve ever sentenced. Somewhat out of character, Daniel hasn’t honed in on Gore yet, and even seems to think it’s not worth tracking him down. So, as you can see, everything’s horrible. Some senile gibberish about Caligula is the best card we’ve got. If you told me I’d be in this situation a year ago, I probably would have throttled you and blogged about it.
But this is an idealistic column, and so I bring you hope sweeter even than a dozen Splenda packets. It’s a story of the underdog coming out on top, I mean to say. So how did I bag at least one money quote?
Well, truth be told, the incident had a deus ex machina feel. I was yanking out follicles of my hair and sobbing about the blurb situation as I read a little Jacques Lacan to cheer myself up. Then, the weather in C. Lunt’s skull suddenly shifted, and I achieved total serenity. (Brain chemistry or something. The tipping point. I don’t know.) For your reference, all I had ingested that day was yogurt, raisins, and schnapps, if you’d like to try your hand at nirvana. Anyway, my hands reached for a pad and pen, and out came:
This book will give you the confidence to blurb your own. – Cate Lunt
Perfect.