"In the blurbosphere," says Charles McGrath, recent editor of the New York Times Book Review, "has there ever been a book that wasn't acclaimed?" He considers that indispensable adjective of praise -- rooted in the Latin clamare, "to shout," also the root of "clamor" -- to be the key word in the publishing world's "language of hagiography."
Let's parse that. I define McGrath's blurbosphere as "the throbbing universe of book promotion," coined on the analogy of blogosphere, "the galaxy of Weblog commentators." Hagiography (not, as I first thought, the bio of Al Haig) is "writings about the lives of saints." Thus, in the straining-to-sell world of book marketing, we have a language that treats lesser-known authors like stars shooting toward the firmament of literary fame.
Acclaimed, in this fulsome lingo of book ads and catalogs, now means merely "the author received at least one good review." Widely acclaimed means "two or more, plus a cable-TV plug." Critically acclaimed means "it was decently reviewed in a specialized publication but didn't sell."
Long- is a beloved half-word adverb in the blurbosphere. The letters of Lytton Strachey, advertises Farrar, Straus & Giroux, regarded as one of the classiest publishers, is "a long-overdue collection." Whenever a writer has had a dry spell and taken forever to deliver, his book is hawked as long-awaited. On the other hand, if the author has a hot hand and sold well last time out, the adverb is switched and his work becomes eagerly awaited.
Sales problem: How do you blurb a dull book? Meticulously researched, or if you're really in trouble, definitive, exhaustive, spiced with profoundly insightful. Whatever covers a lot of ground and spans the millennia is a sweeping epic, which could soon be a major motion picture about three generations of janitors.
Brilliant, through overuse, has lost its sparkle. Fascinating has lost its charm, powerful is impotent and even towering achievement is getting shaky. Liberals go for heart-shattering and deeply empathetic while conservatives are attracted to gripping and the hard-driving compelling.
For adventure novels, riveting is getting a rosy run, along with the hypnotic mesmerizing and the noun page turner. For novels in which characters determine the plot, San Francisco likes absorbing and satisfying, and New York pushes moving and masterly. Upbeat women's books take triple adjectives, with an adverb rhythmically punching the third: "Funny, ferocious, intensely likable" and "Droll, shrewd, irresistibly entertaining" describe the same Random House novel.
Originality rears its head: "a boggle-the-mind experience" propels one Booker Prize winner; "stampede reading" invites an all-nighter, and "at once realistic and phantasmagorical" appeals to the oxymoronic.
Desperate copywriters use the "in the tradition of" device, piggybacking on another writer's fame. This says "if you liked that best seller, you'll automatically love this," a marketing idea Amazon seized upon. In fact, it signals "we're using this best-selling name without permission to attract your attention because that author would never stoop to blurb this."
Literary editors have learned to be suspicious of all endorsements. Sam Tanenhaus, the current editor of the Times Book Review, says, "You're never sure what debts are being paid and what logs are being rolled." For years, the Times has forbidden all its writers from giving blurbs, a barrier that's sometimes a blessing because it's tough to turn down a pal.
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