We recently offered a look at the odd history of the book blurb here at The Millions. Now the New York Times is looking at this peculiar custom, inviting four contributors to discuss their merits and pitfalls. Among them is our own Bill Morris, who revisits his 2011 essay “To Blurb Or Not To Blurb” about the dilemma he faced when asked to blurb a friend’s book.
Debating the Book Blurb
Tuesday New Release Day: Banville, Erdrich, Petterson, Meek, Helprin, Lehane, Cisneros, Sloan, Josefson, Bertino, Ware, Paris Review, BASS, Amis
October kicks off with a mega-dose of new fiction: Ancient Light by John Banville, The Round House by Louise Erdrich, It’s Fine By Me by Per Petterson, The Heart Broke In by James Meek, In Sunlight and in Shadow by Mark Helprin, Live by Night by Dennis Lehane, and Have You Seen Marie? by Sandra Cisneros. And that doesn’t even include debuts Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan, That’s Not a Feeling by Dan Josefson, and Safe As Houses by Marie-Helene Bertino. And there’s more: graphic novel master Chris Ware’s Building Stories, The Paris Review’s collection Object Lessons (we interviewed one of the Steins behind the book) and this year’s Best American Short Stories collection. Finally, Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim is out in a new NYRB Classics edition with an introduction by Keith Gessen.
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Weekend Links
This past week at the LBC was a lot of fun. We discussed the book I nominated, The Cottagers by Marshall Klimasewiski. If you missed it, you should check it out, particularly Friday’s podcast which includes an appearance by yours truly.In other podcast news, Ed, who is an accomplished podcaster, tried and failed to interview Marisha Pessl, author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics, for his show. Callie also had some thoughts on Pessl, as did CAAF.Fresh off of declaring that the typical litblogger is “some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute,” Richard Ford will see his Bascombe trilogy turned into an HBO mini-series (via Scott). Litblogger Noah gave Ford’s Lay of the Land a good review last year, but for all Ford knows, Noah was writing from here.Scott looks at Dave Eggers’ What is the What and ponders how atrocity is portrayed in fiction.
On the Bro’d
“I first met Dean not long after Tryscha and I hooked up. I had just gotten over a wicked fucking hangover that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with a six-foot-five douchebag and a beer bong… Before that I’d often dreamed of going West to see hot LA actress chicks and try In N’ Out burgers, always vaguely planning and never taking off.” – From On the Bro’d, where every sentence of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is retold for Bros. (via The Rumpus)
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