"Luminous," a reminder.

The NYT has a piece called "Luminous New Historical Fiction," so let's review the history of "luminous" on this blog.

I've said it all before, and I've summed it up before. So I will simply republish this post of mine from September 27, 2022:

"I thought the memo had gone out that the word 'luminous' had been banned from book reviews."

I wrote in December 2009, recalling a wonderful 2007 essay by Joe Queenan.

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." 

"When somebody says, 'You should do something'..."

"... the subtext is: 'You're an idiot for not already doing it.' Nobody takes advice under those conditions."

"In her luminous memoir..."

I thought the memo had gone out that the word "luminous" had been banned from book reviews:

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.

That's Joe Queenan, writing in the New York Times in 2007, but now here's the New York Times with its 10 Best Books of 2009, calling a memoir "luminous." How can I trust their judgment? To be fair, they didn't call anything "incandescent" or "astonishing."

"If the intention of the Obama administration is to tone down the confrontational rhetoric being used by our enemies..."

"...the effort is already reaping results. This week, in a pronounced shift from its usual theatrical style, the Taliban announced that it will no longer refer to its favorite method of murder as 'beheadings,' but will henceforth employ the expression 'cephalic attrition.' 'Flayings' -- a barbarously exotic style of execution that has been popular in this part of the world since before the time of Alexander -- will now be described as 'unsolicited epidermal reconfigurations.' In a similar vein, lopping off captives' arms will now be referred to as 'appendage furloughing,' while public floggings of teenaged girls will from here on out be spoken of as 'metajudicial interfacing.'"

"The asexual, unmaternal, left-leaning eyes of a poorly groomed woman."

Don't miss the hilarious Joe Queenan review of Edward Klein's book "The Truth About Hillary." I'll just list my favorite phrases:

"Waterworld'' stinks, but it does not reek

short-haired women from the sapphic charnel house Wellesley College

Geraldo Rivera's sublimely vile autobiography, ''Exposing Myself"

only about the 16th sleaziest book I have ever read

referred to by classmates as ''Sister Frigidaire"

the asexual, unmaternal, left-leaning eyes of a poorly groomed woman

manipulative pinkos who were playing for the other team

commie gangsters associated with mobbed-up trade unions