Comparisons Are Odious!
by Ken DeVries
I don't know how you'd do it, but if I were the guy who had to write descriptive blurbs for the covers of mediocre novels I would take the easy way out. I'd compare each book to any very popular novel of the same type--the first thing that popped into my head.
I just happen to have some examples right here.
I'm sorry that all of my dystopian novels which mention 1984 and Brave New World on the cover are in a box somewhere, but the blurb for THE KARMA MACHINE by Michael Davidson ("A Tale of Cybernetic Buddhism") says it's "The ultimate trip into inner space! The most mind-shattering experience since 2001!" On the back cover it goes even further by comparing itself to a famous author's entire body of work; "IN THE MIND-EXPANDING TRADITION OF HERMANN HESSE." Whoever first used that "tradition" link came up with a gem -- you can find a tradition for any piece of hackwork. Honesty, however, would have forced them to put this one in the tradition of every other tedious talky agenda-packed piece of fake sci-fi from a one-shot novelist. On the other hand, THE FORTEC CONSPIRACY by Garvin and Addeo claims to provide, "The suspense of THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN. The vision of 2001. A nightmare reality all its own." And a standardness which, I'm afraid, renders it unmemorable.
Suppose you've got a novel about young people taking over or creating a new society. What can you compare that to? The cover of Only Lovers Left Alive by Dave Wallis proclaims, "SMASHING, LOOTING, KILLING, LOVING - THE TEENAGERS TAKE OVER THE WORLD! A NOVEL EVEN MORE SHATTERING THAN LORD OF THE FLIES" Yes, that's it... Lord of the Flies.
Okay then, you've got an animal. A big, mean animal like in 'GATOR by George Ford has to be "MORE TERRIFYING THAN JAWS." A bunch of little animals, as in the Killer Kats novel FERAL by Berton Roueche, are inevitably "MORE CHILLING THAN THE BIRDS." Of the two, however, Feral stunk much worse, but I must admit a sneaking fondness for the steaming passions of swamp novels, even if they have a big animal chomping people up.
Any horror novel can be compared with any other horror novel, and I've even seen them reach so far as to brag about coming from the same PUBLISHER as The Exorcist. MIND OUT by Diana Carter isn't a horror or sci-fi novel, (actually it's a pretty interesting Cult Fantasy about a group called The Cerebralists, obviously inspired by Scientology's early '70s British publicity wave) yet the blurbsters insist that, "If you were spellbound by The Exorcist, terrified by The Other, or astonished by Clockwork Orange... (sic) you will find this unusual novel mindbendingly real!"
The astonishing thing is that these novels you've never heard of are all "better," "more shattering," "more frightening" than the Very Famous novels whose spectres they try to raise in their support. Don Pendleton, who went on to create one of those interminable Male Fantasy series, spent his earlier days in the creation of some pretty standard sci-fi and Global Disaster fantasies, one of which is 1989: POPULATION DOOMSDAY. If you have any doubts that this Pollution Threat novel, which never once addresses the issue of overpopulation, was retitled to ride on the coattails of a more famous book, they spell it out for you right on the cover: "More frightening than DR. PAUL EHRLICH'S THE POPULATION BOMB" just so you'll know. Pendleton's previous novel, CATACLYSM: THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED goes for blurb transcendence by claiming to be "THE MOST FRIGHTENING STORY YOU'LL EVER READ." I can't imagine what circumstances would be required to make that true. I thought The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins was more frightening.
Sometimes if a book is eccentric or confusing enough the reviewers will do the hard work. Since they don't have such strict space limitations they tend to get carried away. Julio Cortazar's 62: A MODEL KIT is said by one Carlos Fuentes to be "An ironic, sentimental journey through a city plan drawn up by the Marx brothers with an assist from Bela Lugosi." Since neither of them are books or authors that might explain 62's utter impenetrability. That's not so bad though. GOG by Andrew Sinclair was just barely finishable (but don't ask me what it was about), in spite of this quote which really should have cost a San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle reviewer their job; "A sort of British John Barth... To put it another way, GOG is very like what might have come forth if Robert Graves, C.P. Snow, and Anthony Newley had collaborated on GILES GOAT-BOY with additional dialogue and score by John Lennon..." Anthony Newley? The "What Kind of Fool Am I," Doctor Doolittle, GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE Anthony Newley? Now you see the reason for the title of this essay.
Pardon my overweening pride but I think I am just too smart or educated for the blurb thing to work on me. Blurbs are really designed for people who have to make up their minds which book to buy real fast because the bus is about to leave--or for people who simply have no discernment at all. I know I'll never see a book which has the sort of blurb which would really appeal to me: Imagine turning a squeaking paperback rack and seeing "In the wry tradition of Laurence Sterne and Thomas Love Peacock" "More eccentric than A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS" "Denser than MELMOTH THE WANDERER, more convoluted than THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT." Blurbs like that, I am sure, would reduce any book's potential audience to approximately three. Ah, but those three could rule the world.