Last week the folks at Simon & Schuster in the US announced that they are no longer requiring their authors to scrounge and grovel for blurb quotes from literary luminaries (AKA friends, frenemies and coerced idols). Down with nepotism and unpaid labour! Up with democratic dust jackets! Begone hyperbole! Dazzling. Luminous. Tour de force. Good riddance to you all, you florid, empty guff.
While we’re at it, I’d like to request another puffery-related moratorium: can we please, for the love of dark academia, stop comparing novels to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History? And not only for the sake of readers, who will inevitably be disappointed, but for the writers whose work is nobbled by the comparison. Tartt’s bacchanalian debut was a literary lightning bolt. Let’s just accept that it won’t strike twice.
