Do blogs deserve to be put on blurbs?
JA
October 16
A while ago, our ed, Sophie Cunningham, ran this post on the blogs versus print debate – namely the idea that what is written in print is somehow more legitimate and more reliable than what is said online. I won’t double-back here, but I do want to comment on a few recent events that may make an interesting post-script of sorts.
Mark Sarvas, author of Harry Revised and much-respected blogger at The Elegant Variation, was recently quoted on the cover of Rob Riemen’s Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal, released by Yale University Press. This was perhaps one of the first times that a blog has been used as a cover quote in the US and the act was the cause of some surprise. Brian Sholis, a writer and a former editor at Artforum, noted that Sarvas had been given pride of place on the front, while ‘geographically dispersed but uniformly respected literary intellectuals’ such as Azar Nafisi, Mario Vargas Llosa, Adam Zagajewski, and Ivan Klima were regulated to the back cover. As expected, Sholis then asked the inevitable question, albeit in a more measured manner than some:
Without denigrating Sarvas’s endeavour, which I read and respect, I wonder if this latter development – a typographical designation for an unedited online venue that places it on par with an entirely different range of publications – doesn’t do more harm than good, and potentially confuse readers unfamiliar with the online literary world. Am I simply being curmudgeonly or conservative?
Sarvas posted a thoughtful response on TEV. While he also stated that he respected Sholis’ opinion, he pointed out (quite correctly) that advocators of print are too quick to assume that all online content is ‘unedited’ and therefore sub par:
First, the blurbs on the back are not from publications, they are classic blurbs, so they are no more edited than my copy. (And they don't exist in any form, other than a letter to a publisher.) Second, although all sorts of sloppiness can creep in here on a daily basis, the contents of my Recommended sidebar are approached with the same care I bring to my paid reviewing work. So I am generally confident that what you find there does not represent a slide in quality of standards over my print work.
He also added that if cover quotes were put in place by publishers to demonstrate some kind of ‘critical authority’, then blogs could be just as trustworthy as print.
I’ve come to believe that ‘authority’ is, ultimately, earned over time as one provides readers with a voice and perspective they feel they can come to rely on. And clearly, in the six years I’ve been here, TEV has managed to do that, at least for some readers.
Blogging may be appear to be more openly subjective and more casual than some of its print counterparts, however to me this is no reason why quotes should be excluded from blurbs. The familiar ‘us-versus-them’ tone of the debate seems to detract from the real threshold question here, as pointed out by James Meader from Picador US – if a quote is to be used on a blurb or a cover, then the only real concern should be whether is it insightful, reliable and well-written. As newspapers and other media cut back on their review sections, readers will begin to look more and more to blogs for discussion and criticism, and publishers will need to respond to this. As John Williams of The Second Pass commented, ‘[Slate and Salon] are online-only sites that have become accepted in the mainstream of publishing, and that will happen more and more with book blogs. They’ll have an authority that publishers will look to.’
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Comments
16 Oct 09 at 9:00
"unedited" is the operand there. Why would the presence of an editor, whose function is not to change the opinion of the writer but to clean up its expression, make any difference to the value of the 'blurb'? I look forward to the days when the obvious sillyness of valuing words that are printed on a piece of paper more than words that are printed electronically is over. Perhaps then we can being to discuss the changing role of the editor in the new world.
...16 Oct 09 at 10:14
It's about the writer/publication's authority and insights on the subject - and frankly, the marketing value of their name on the jacket - and after well over a decade of great writing on blogs, and diminishing space for reviews in papers, leaving them out of the debate is just out-dated.
...16 Oct 09 at 13:38
I can't believe this is even an issue. Some of the best short form writing in the world is now exclusively confined to blogs. And whose business is it anyway, other than the author's, whom they seek out for a blurb?
...07 Jan 11 at 19:27
why not…
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