Posted by Sterling on 22/9/2009, 22:38:11, in reply to "Re: The Vicar and the backs of books"
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I agree that there are a variety of reasons that authors provide blurbs. Writers being human, they are likely to be supportive of their friends. Favors for their agent or publisher are not unknown. And I'm sure that some blurbs can be purchased with money or promises. However, I think that authors of the prominence that Joffre mentioned (Atwood, Updike, Munro, DeLillo, et al.) probably can not be bought. I may be naive, but I think that authors as highly respected as these would be aware of the influence of their recommendation and would feel the accompaning responsibility. For example, there is a website that lists all the books that Thomas Pynchon has endorsed. As you read through the list of strange, obscure, and often out-of-print works, they definitely seem like the kind of books that Pynchon would enjoy.
--Previous Message--
: I'm more inclined to believe the blurbs with regard to
: classic books. The blurbs generally weren't written
: for the purpose of putting them on the back of books,
: but often were taken instead from journals, essays,
: letters, etc.
:
: With contemporary books, however, I take the blurbs
: with a grain of salt. I suspect the blurbs often are
: written by friends of the author, or they were written
: for a price. A former work colleague of mine, for
: example, once studied with the writer Mary Gordon at
: Columbia and became good friends with her. This
: person's glowing blurb appears on the back of one of
: Gordon's books.
:
: Then there is the case of Jacques Pepin regarding
: cookbooks, supporting what Steven suggested. I can't
: remember the details exactly, but apparently he gave a
: fantastic blurb for a book whose author later was
: charged with plagiarism. Perhaps to save face and his
: reputation, Pepin admitted that he never actually read
: the book or tested the recipes, but simply was paid
: for providing the blurb.
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