In "Astonish Me," Queenan wrote:
Several years ago, overwhelmed by the flood of material unleashed annually by the publishing industry, I decided to establish a screening program by purchasing only books that at least one reviewer had described as ''astonishing.''Previously, I had limited my purchases to merchandise deemed ''luminous'' or ''incandescent,'' but this meant I ended up with an awful lot of novels about bees, Provence or Vermeer. The problem with incandescent or luminous books is that they veer toward the introspective, the arcane or the wise, while I prefer books that go off like a Roman candle. When I buy a book, I don't want to come away wiser or happier or even better informed. I want to get blown right out of the water by the author's breathtaking pyrotechnics. I want to come away astonished.
He was making fun of the absurd overuse of the verb "astonish" in book promotions.
[T]he truth is, if nobody describes a book as astonishing, it probably isn’t astonishing, and if it isn’t astonishing, who needs it?
I remembered that essay 2 years after I read it, as I was reading the New York Times piece "10 Best Books of 2009," which called a memoir "luminous." I said "How can I trust their judgment? To be fair, they didn't call anything 'incandescent' or 'astonishing.'"
And I'm remembering it again, now 15 years later, as I'm seeing — at Grammarphobia — that there's a new book, "Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A–Z of Literary Persuasion," by Louise Willder.
The blub is ‘my 100 words of little white lies’, she says. ‘There has to be some kind of sugar coating and, yes, lying.’ Of course, one has to draw the line somewhere, and Willder would like to see fewer shopworn adjectives on book covers, specifically ‘luminous’, ‘dazzling’, ‘incandescent’, ‘stunning’, ‘shimmering’, ‘sparkling’, ‘glittering’, ‘devastating’, ‘searing’, ‘shattering’, ‘explosive’, ‘epic’, ‘electrifying’, ‘dizzying’, ‘chilling’, ‘staggering’, ‘deeply personal’ and the ubiquitous ‘haunting’.
Hooray! Publishers (and reviewers), take note. I never could understand ‘incandescent’. Even light bulbs aren’t incandescent anymore. And while we’re at it, I’d like to blue-pencil the noun phrases ‘rite of passage’, ‘coming of age’ and ‘richly woven tapestry’....
What words can you use when all the words have been used before? It's promotion, so you can't just use the truth as your guiding light. So I'll just say let your guiding light be never go toward the light. If you're describing a text, never use metaphors suggesting that the words are emitting light. So no "luminous," no "incandescent," no "glittering" or "shimmering" or "sparkling."
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I only cook food that is described as "shatteringly crisp" in the recipe writeup.
"Amazing" is another superlative that's overused.
Every useful terms is sooner or later cheapened through over-use.
And I'm remembering it again, now 15 years later, as I'm seeing — at Grammarphobia — that there's a new book, "Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A–Z of Literary Persuasion," by Louise Willder.
When I read that I wondered if the Larry David show had actually been around for 15 years. Then I remembered that he didn't invent the phrase. Now I see that the show has been around for over 20 years.
It's like that. Growing up up, I lived in the World Book Encyclopedia and its annual year books, so I had a fine sense of what happened in 1968 and what happened in 1969. Nowadays, I remember a film or television series from a year or two back and look it up on the internet and realize that it came out 10 or 20 years ago.
How about awesome? I only read books that are certified to be awesome by at least 10 reviewers.
I avoid novels that are described (on the jacket or back cover) as 'important' or whose author is described as 'an important voice.'
Previously, I had limited my purchases to merchandise deemed ''luminous'' or ''incandescent,'' but this meant I ended up with an awful lot of novels about bees, Provence or Vermeer.
"Luminous" is definitely annoying, and it usually does get applied to anything about the Mediterranean, Vermeer, the Impressionists, or memories of a precocious childhood.
Now there is a novel out with the title The Luminous Novel.
Similar to the novels by American poet Ben Lerner, Mario Levrero is all about voice. It doesn't matter how seemingly trivial or mundane the subject, anything from playing games on the computer to observing the movement of ants in his garden, what makes The Luminous Novel shine is authorial voice.
However, Mario Levrero's voice is not at all like Ben Lerner's poetic, quasi-baroque voice. Indeed, as translator Annie McDermott conveyed in an interview: "Levrero isn't pretentious; for Levrero, writing should be down to earth, not flowery or elaborate or anything resembling stuffy."
Additionally, as per Annie: "Levrero is earnest, he tries hard to be understood but at the same time he's ironic, he recognizes the humor in attempting to communicate to others one's innermost feelings and perceptions." It's this combination of earnestness and irony that makes The Luminous Novel such a compelling read, a comic novel Levrero himself described as "a monument to failure."
Interesting?
Semantic angst.
Bees, Provence and Vemeer ain't that bad a group of book subjects.
I don't read anything containing "liminal" or "numinous".
""Amazing" is another superlative that's overused."
"Amazing" is in the set of words that has "awesome." Not so tempting to literary people pushing books.
That's why "astonishing" is so big. It's picking up slack from the unusable "awesome" and "amazing." It seems more elevated. Total bullshit, of course, but that's the assignment, writing a blurb.
"Coruscating" is still my favorite.
"When I read that I wondered if the Larry David show had actually been around for 15 years. Then I remembered that he didn't invent the phrase."
This confused me.
1. The book "Blurb Your Enthusiasm" is new. (I was also talking about a 15-year-old essay titled "Astonish Me.")
2. I thought Larry David did invent the phrase, a play on "Curb your dog."
In one of his 1940 reviews (I can provide the exact reference if anyone wants it) he observes that any disgustingly scatological book is invariably praised as "Rabelaisian" in the blurb.
Wooops! "He" in my 10:41am comment is George Orwell.
Goes on the DO NOT READ PILE:
"Coming of age"
"rite of passage"
"Heartbreaking"
"Uplifting"
"Groundbreaking"
"Courageous"
"feat of empathy"
"powerful exploration"
"haunted"
"Compassionate"
As far as my fiction reading goes, I can't remember the last time I read anything published since the 1970s. Too many disappointments have soured me on the current crop of books. Heck, these days I usually stick to books no more recent than the turn of the last century. So I guess I don't have to sort through the blurbs.
Tim maguire said...
Every useful terms is sooner or later cheapened through over-use.
Every recently deceased person or pet was "beloved".
All the way from the Queen down to Rover.
Whatever happened to "trenchant?"
As reviewers switch over to gen-Z, I expect that the problem will evaporate as all praise for books will dwindle to "cool" and "awesome."
"Goes on the DO NOT READ PILE:"
Any reference to Oprah's book club.
Praised by NPR.
"Elegant" long ago lost any meaning as a descriptive term; reviewers toss it in to approve any slightest degree of o.k.-ness. Writes in complete sentences: check. Paragraphs of varied length, none too long: check. Reviewer: "so-and-so's elegant prose..."
In Mirage (1964) the bookstore clerk urges a book on Gregory Peck. "It's eminently readable," she blurbles. (Best line in the picture.)
Time was if you did a shot every time you came across eminently readable in the Sunday book sections, you'd be too drunk to haul out of bed Monday morning.
just a few pages over in the dictionary/lexicon
Numinous is a term derived from the Latin numen, meaning "arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring.
I mostly read non-fiction -- history, biographies, that sort of thing -- so what a review needs to tell me is (1) what or who is it about, (2) why should I care about that person or event (if I already know that, this is unnecessary), (3) is the book well written, and (4) how long is it (I'm retired and have lots of time for reading, but even old fogeys have other things to do).
I read some fiction, now and then, on the recommendation of friends whose judgement I trust, but none of my friends use any of the adjectives discussed in this thread (I don't have the kind of friends who say "luminous").
I should have read that more carefully but I saw the "Blurb Your Enthusiasm" and the italicized 15 years, and was off to the races.
Larry David didn't coin the phrase "Curb your enthusiasm." "Curb thy tongue" goes back a long way, maybe to medieval times, certainly to the Smothers Brothers. "Curb your hilarity" was the catch phrase of a comedian a century ago. David did use the phrase ironically, but that's the only way "curb your" phrases get used in our time, except when one is talking about dogs.
"Luminous" may be popular in criticism because it hints at "numinous" without actually going there.
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