PERSONAL COLUMN

Love me, love my blurb

JOHN ROWAN WILSON

Last week I received a letter from my pub- lishers enclosing a proof of the blurb for my new book. Since I first started writing I have received perhaps half a dozen of these communications and each one of them has afflicted me with the kind of paralysing depression from which it takes days to recover. To read the blurb of your own book is akin to hearing your voice for the first time on a tape-recorder or catching a glance of an unfamiliar profile of yourself, shirt-tails out, belly drooping, mouth gaping slackly, in one of those cruel mirrors they have in tailors' shops. It is the reductio ad absurdum of all your hopes, the moment of destruction of your harmless, childish van- ities about your own work. And the most awful thing of all is that the author of it is not aiming at criticism or mockery. He is trying desperately hard to be kind.

He also, of course, has his problems. The blurb is perhaps the most strange, delicate, and frustrating of all literary art forms. Its unique character lies in the fact that it aims to appeal successfully to three different groups of people with entirely conflicting interests and tastes. The first of these is the bookseller. You cannot (though there are publishers who sometimes fail to realise this) sell copies of books unless you can first get them into the shops. A book which isn't stocked is a book which isn't sold. Conversely, a book which is heavily stocked is the book which the retailer is going to push on to that dear old undecided lady who wants something for Auntie Flo for Christmas. Without the support of the book- seller, the author is lost.

The bookseller doesn't read all the books the publisher's salesman brings round to him. He hasn't the time, even if he had the inclina- tion. He doesn't read the reviews, either, since he has to order his stock before the book is published if it is to be available on the date of publication. What does he read, then? He reads the blurb.

He reads it with the attitude of mind of a man on the look-out for entertainment rather than art. And there are certain hard facts he looks for. What is the story, does it contain characters that the ordinary reader can identify with, has it got lots of action or sex? What is its background? There are a lot of people who will only buy books on certain subjects, like for instance war or high society or medicine or espionage. What kind of book is it? How can it be categorised? Highbrow, adventure, humorous, cosy? Is it in any way like another book that has done very well recently?

A straightforward selling job, you may say, though requiring an amount of detail that would send the average J. Walter Thompson copywriter straight round to the 'Coach and Horses' for alcoholic support. But unfortunately it isn't only the bookseller who reads the blurb. The critic reads it too. The critic is a man sated with books, weary of the obvious, and largely concerned with finding something unusual to fortify the interest of his own writing. It is no use trying to interest him in a fast-moving yarn about the tensions arising in a North Sea convoy or to whet his appetite by saying your author has a gay, teasing style which will enchant the devoted readers of Angela Ihirkell or

Barbara Cartland. He is looking for more than that. An experiment with the time sequence perhaps. Dialogue which is a literal translation from the Gujerati. A stripping of layers from the personality, a flavour of Nabokov. a slight touch of the William Goldings.

And then, of course, there is the author. What he wants, quite simply, is praise and plenty of it. He doesn't like the plot told, because plots always sound banal and re- petitive when put in synopsis. Nor does he relish being compared to living writers; the chances are that if they are big enough for him to cling to their coat-tails he is jealous of them anyway. He doesn't mind so much being compared to Dickens or Turgenev, but doesn't much take to the idea of being introduced as the new J. B. Priestley. If he is an established author he may not even take kindly to being compared to himself. 'Readers who enjoyed Clive Throgmorton's Goat in Boots will meet some old friends in his new satirical excursion along the pur- lieus of King's Road Chelsea' may give a sensitive author the impression that his pub- lishers think he is stuck in a rut.

The blurb writer sits in his eyrie at the top of the elegant publisher's building in Mayfair or St. James's. Down below, in thickly car- peted salons heavy with crystal chandeliers, contracts are being signed, film rights sold, retired generals cajoled over glasses of Pol Roger into writing their memoirs. But it is up on the fifth floor, wedged under the roof, that the power house lies. Here the blurb writer hangs his jacket over a chair, loosens his collar and tie, takes off his shoes, and searches for the phrase that makes all the difference between the top of the best-seller list and the remainder basket.

He stares glumly at his first three drafts.

'Unexpected as a dagger thrust, this viol- ent, lustful novel penetrates to the very heart of our corrupted, money-crazed, sex-mad society. Mr Throgmorton is determined to spare us no detail of the savage, ruthless ambitions which lie buried in every one of us. Starting as the second tuba player in the Accrington Prize Silver Band, his hero, Fred Scrutting, savagely claws his way over the bodies of beautiful women to the chair- Manship of Consolidated Zinc ....Powerful, daring, fast-moving ....A strange blend of D.H. Lawrence and Alistair Maclean ....Mr Throgmorton is married with four children and lives in Thames Ditton

'This is a novel of today. It proceeds on two levels, one of self-conscious and deliberate sensation, the other a subtle and often satirical exploration of the tensions of our increasingly affluent and permissive society. The mysterious episode of the rape of the Cherokee Indian boy in the cellar at Notting Hill Gate is a typical example of the sardonic ambivalence of Clive Throg- morton's approach. Meaningless though it may be to some, its evocation of a similar scene in Jean Baptiste Millamant's Caliche- mar de Salsifis gives it a rich, dream-like quality that transcends the sordid sexual details ...'

'Clive Throgmorton, already renowned as the most promising novelist now writing in the English language, has written what can only be described as a masterpiece. Fred Scrutting, his hero, will assuredly take his place as one of the never-to-be-forgotten characters of fiction. Add to that a riveting story, a host of fascinating minor characters, a brilliant, ironic prose style, a deep com- passion tempered with realism ...'

The blurb writer sighs and tries again. After six hours of backbreaking work he has managed to blend these three irreconcilable drafts into something that looks just possible. He brushes off the cigarette ash, mops up the coffee stains, and sends it to the author.

The author has been waiting for it in a state of numb despair. To him, the blurb is not just a blurb. It is a sign that all the fun part of the book is now over. Gone are the days when he lounged happily at ease with his characters, moving them here and there at will, the master of his own little world. From now on he is involved in all the inevitable agonies of the publishing process.

After the blurb there will be the dust- jacket, in which his sensitive portrait of tor- mented adolescence will be introduced to the public by the picture of a murdered blonde in a see-through nightdress. There will be a young woman from Publicity, who buys him lunch at Wheeler's, and tries to per- suade him to autograph copies at a new bookshop in Peckham High Street. There will be proofs to read, letters from his American publisher suggesting that he re- writes the last four chapters in the hope of getting a selection by the Literary Guild. And worst of all, those grey shapes looming over the horizon like battleships waiting to sink him for ever - the critics.

It isn't perhaps surprising that sometimes the author turns chicken, as I did last week. and funks reading his draft blurb at all. But one can't play the coward for ever. Yester- day I took a couple of drinks, screwed up my courage, and had a look at it.

I read through it quickly the first time. It really didn't seem too bad - not bad at all. Then I took it again, rather more slowly. All right, perhaps, but now I could see ways in which it could be improved. There seemed to be a certain lack of enthusiasm about it. They had forgotten to mention the spark- ling wit and the texture of the prose. The delicate counterpoint between the hero's thought processes and his actions had been unaccountably overlooked. Nor had they tried to place the book in its proper literary context. Surely it wouldn't have done any actual harm to compare it with Crime and Punishment ...?