Blurb Your Enthusiasm: A Cracking Compendium of Book Blurbs, Writing Tips, Literary Folklore and Publishing Secrets

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Writers, then, mostly stay clear of blurbing their blurbers. But is there something more subtle going on? When Ellis called Frey's book "a heartbreaking memoir", was he making a reference to Dave Eggers' memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? Possibly not. But I'll come to Eggers' book in a moment: I think it's the most lavishly blurbed book I've ever seen.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder | Book review - TLS Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder | Book review - TLS

Every clich�� and hundred-times-told story or anecdote about books and publishing is repeated here. Never mind if some of those tales are untrue, because this is not a serious book, anyway. Nothing to see or learn here, just a few jokes, jokes, and jokes, it's like ten late-night monologues in a row. one of the first tactile books for children was pat the bunny , 1940, which featured different textures inside, and was advertised with the great line ‘for whom the bell tolls was magnificent – but it hasn’t any bunny in it.’ It’s also about quotes, titles, first lines, hooks, adverts, puns, swearing, plots, someone called Belinda and much more. It answers questions such as: I love all that and loved the book. (And anyway, anyone who says that Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker is a masterpiece, that her new favourite detective is DI Manon Bradshaw and that Sue Townsend is a stone cold comic genius can Do No Wrong in my view.) Blurb Your Enthusiasm is a real gem and anyone with any interest in books will enjoy it immensely, I think. A haunting tour de force of genre-defying wit and love, Blurb Your Enthusiasm will take you gently by the hand of Reading and hold your head under the water of Literary Appeal until you finally, finally appreciate the Art of Blurbs.No, I'd say something stronger. It's nauseating and demeaning. I don't believe for a second that people don't know what's going on." If you’re a writer, it’s all about finding your voice. If you’re a copywriter, it’s usually about expressing someone else’s. One is an art; one is a craft (or if it’s an art, it’s the art of imitation). You just have to listen.’

Blurb Your Enthusiasm: A Cracking Compendium of Book Blurbs

I loved the chapter on the classics, the opening quote from Alan Bennett is all too true and highlights Wilders previous point about how a opening line can make or break a novel. Being a big whodunit fan I really found the section on writing blurbs for these books very interesting and it does explain why that sometimes the blurb is better than the actual book. The section of woman’s literature was my favourite I have had many of the same thoughts as the author, and I particularly loved the discussion and quotes from Marian Keyes. Hamm (oy, Hamm of all names?) accuses Albert Brooks of being a shanda when an embarrassing secret is discovered at the end of the episode, one of the only references to Covid. David’s decision to largely put the pandemic in the rearview fits perfectly with the tone of the series, which has always shoved aside life’s bigger and more realistic problems and focused on the frustrating aggravations of minutiae. Or her take on the sort of Literary Fiction where nothing really happens: “You know the kind of book. They win prizes. There generally isn’t much in the way of a plot. Or if there is, it’s something along the lines of woman goes away and finds herself, someone thinks about an event from their past, or sad middle-aged man has an affair – or even just considers said affair and doesn’t go through with it.” Followed a little later by “... Thomas Pynchon’s notoriously ‘difficult’ (in other words, mainly read by show-offs) novel Gravity’s Rainbow…. I wonder how many people have read it and then not told anybody they’ve read it? Zero, I suspect. Because the point of books like these is that they are an Iron Man literary challenge, and once you’ve been macho enough to read them you can boast about it.” The American usage of the word “blurb” is for advance review quotes that fellow authors contribute for inclusion on the cover. I didn’t realize I used the word interchangeably for either meaning; in the UK, one might call such a quote a “puff.”

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Then as now, hyperbole sold books. And speaking as a copywriter, Willder admits to creating her share. The blub is ‘my 100 words of little white lies’, she says. ‘There has to be some kind of sugar coating and, yes, lying.’ Writing something longer than 100 words has been a novel and joyful experience,” she said. “I’m thrilled to share what I’ve learned about the art of literary persuasion over the years, and to impart a bit of publishing gossip on the way. I hope Blurb Your Enthusiasm will enlighten and delight readers – and maybe raise a few eyebrows in the trade too.” Gotcha, didn’t it? That line got me too. It’s from a blurb for The Plague, and the nameless copywriter deserves a plaque. Those five words conveyed all the ominous menace of the book and got there a lot faster than Camus, bless him.