ON WRITING BLURBS.

Otago Witness, Issue 4041, 25 August 1931, Page 64

ON WRITING BLURBS.

■’Have you ever tried your hand at. writing a “blurb”! ITobaibly not. Nor,, unless you arc unlucky enough to be a publisher, or gifted enough to be : an author, are you ever likely to do so. Reader! .go down on your knees arid thank God for small mercies. For the blurb, that innocent little paragraph which appears on the inside flap of a book-jacket, is one of the banes of a .publisberis life. Thorns in his flesh there are many, but few as sharp as this. How little does the casual reader think, as he glances superciliously at a cover, of the pains which the writing of those few. brief lines has cost! How ignorant he is of the scratching of heads, the searching of hearts, the veritable agony and bloody sweat which has gone to the making of that one insignificant •piece of prose. If he were not, he might be less ready with his criticisms. Just consider for a moment what a well-written blurb has to be. It must be short, it must be snappy. Originally designed to help the bookseller's assistant, it must give some idea of the contents of a book, yet .not so much that it will spoil the story for a .prospective reader. It must suggest, in the fewest, possible words, the style and scope of the interior, and if possible give some idea of the type of person to whom the book is most likely to appeal. This, on the other hand, it must do with extreme circumspection, or it will merely attract one .class of reader at the expense of another. Finally, and here’s the rub. it must attempt the well-nigh impossible task of recommending itself warmly without .appearing either unduly boastful or tiresomelv self-satisfied.

The blurb, in the natural course of events, has ceased to be merely informative and become, in addition, commendatory. Too good an opportunity for advertisement, it quickly lost its initial character and began to partake of the nature of a “puff,” rather than of a purely disinterested criticism. Competition, and the vanity of authors, has done the rest. To-day blurbs are frankly eulogistic, and make no bones about it. But their eulogising must be cautious, carefully tempered to steer a middle course between the twin perils of bathos and bombast. In the whole, it isn't quite so simple as it looks to achieve just that combination of wit and wisdom, pep and profundity, which makes a book irresistible.

And if the average reader is blissfully unconscious of the trials and tribulations of blurb writing, the average critic is not merely unconscious but, apparently, definitely sceptical of them. In this matter professional reviewers are the worst offenders. For some reason

best known to themselves they cannot resist the temptation to tilt at a blurb whenever an opportunity presents itself. If a publisher says ft book is “ not a war book,” he can "be quite certain that at least one critic will remark sententiously, “Flaming Swords is labelled “ not a war book’: I call it a war book.” Or again, if the publisher, in a wellmeant attempt to define a new author’s style, should see fit to compare his work to Hurt of an already established writer, the result is always the same. ,l Mr F. is supposed to be like So-and-so, but I looked in vain for any trace of similarity, etc.”; or more probably, “ The publishers . state that Mr F. has affinities with X. and AT. Publishers’ remarks are generally more misleading than informative, and this is no exception to the rule.” But really the game is too easy. The critic ho ds all the cards. One does not need to be very clever to be able to pick holes in the average blurb. One does not even need to have read the book about which the blurb is written. Any fool can disagree impressively, provided he has the last word. Ami critics, of course, always have the last word. Or I almost always. Every now and again, though, they trip themselves up in their very eagerness io have a smack at the publisher. The following extract provides an interesting case in point. It appeared in a leading periodical, in a review of a novel published a few months

ago. “Publishers’ summaries on hookjackets are not always happy, but the paragraph presumably intended to recommend must be one of the unhappiest on record. In a few sentences it manages to suggest that Mr« H. has written an unpleasant story to illustrate a scientific theory, and that ‘to soften its occasional inevitable starkness ’ she has thrown in ‘ a girl of simp’e tenderness and exquisite loyalty ’ as jam with the pill. She has done nothing of the sort.” This was interesting, because as it. happened Mrs H., at the .publisher’s special request, had written the paragraph herself.—-I. M. in Now and Then.