How do you blurb this?

QuestionMarkWoman1922I don't envy the book publicist who's trying to pull blurbs from the "Books of the Year" list in the latest edition of the Times Literary Supplement. There are plenty of raves among the 47 writers and critics listed there -- one of them, in fact, is my favorite Tolkien critic, Tom Shippey, on Nancy Brown's "Song of the Vikings" (what a great early Christmas present for her!) -- but there are also plenty of tricky, backhanded ones. Here are a few of my favorite, slightly unfriendly comments about books from the list of 47 critics, along with my suggestions to that fictional publicist who's struggling to find something blurb-worthy for promotion.

**

Keith Miller writes, "Jonathan Meades writes with his mouth full, so to speak, and he looms out of the TV like a bailiff; but I loved his Museum Without Walls (Unbound)..."

Verdict: Easy. Cut the first half about his mouth being full! Use the second half about loving this book!

**

Jonathan Benthall writes, "Less suitable as a Christmas present is Disquieting Gifts: Humanitarianism in New Delhi (Stanford University Press) by the American social anthrolopologist Erica Bornstein."

Verdict: No idea. Skip it. Unblurbable. Would you want to pick up a book that announces, on its cover, "less suitable as a Christmas present"?

**

Helen Simpson writes,  in reference to the performance of a play, "Caryl Churchill's Love and Information (Nick Hern) at the Royal Court was a brilliant scattershot fusillade of fifty-plus fragmentary scenes which whistled past at such speed that I had to read the play as well as see it..."

Verdict: It must have been exhilarating to watch this play. That's the sense I get. But that word "scattershot" sounds disorganized and messy. That can be a good thing in a work of art, and thank goodness there's the word "brilliant" to rescue it. I don't know: I'd let the publicist flip a coin on whether to use that quote or not.

**

Hilary Mantel writes, "[Edna O'Brien's] Country Girl is not a great book or even a good one, but it has exerted this year a loathly grip on me."

Verdict: Only a mighty Man Booker winner can dole out this kind of backhanded compliment. How do you blurb this? You can't. It is utterly, completely blurb-proof. And scathingly funny, too. My favorite out of all of them.

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Etc.: Tolkien's names, Pullman's grimly good

Tolkien's monogram, and Tolkien Estate trademark WHAT'S IN A NAME: Just some trivia for the end of the weekend about J.R.R. Tolkien's interest in the late, great storyteller Snorri Sturluson.

Nancy Marie Brown's new book on the Viking chronicler (featured in a previous post at Call of the Siren) who gave us stories of Odin, Thor & Company also recalled her shock as she flipped through the pages of Snorri's Prose Edda.

Brown couldn't believe her eyes: There, on the page, was a listing of the names of Gandalf as well as that courageous, merry band of dwarves that traveled far and wide in order to battle the dragon Smaug. The list was written more than seven centuries before Tolkien penned "The Hobbit."

Here's that passage from Snorri:

Then all the powerful gods went

to their thrones of fate,

the most sacred gods, and

decided among themselves

that a troop of dwarves

should be created...

Nyi, Nidi,

Nordri, Sudri,

Austri, Vestri,

Althjolf, Dvalin,

Nar, Nain,

Niping, Dain,

Bifur, Bafur,

Bombor, Nori,

Ori, Onar,

Oin, Modvitnir,

Vig and Gandalf,

Vindalf, Thorin,

Fili, Kili....

(taken from Penguin Classics' edition of the Prose Edda, translated by Jesse Byock)

So, the great Tolkien wasn't smart enough to invent names on his own?

If you've read any of the great Tolkien scholars, like Tom Shippey, you know the answer: The great inventor of Middle Earth (Midgard, in Snorri's epic) wanted to root his saga in older Western traditions. It increased his cycle's mythic reality. Instead of being an isolated, separate invention, his tales would belong to the great web of historical legend ... and live forever. He wasn't unoriginal -- he was aiming for immortality.

GRIMLY GOOD: Philip Pullman, the epic storyteller behind "The Golden Compass" and the rest of the "His Dark Materials" stories, has retold the stories of the Brothers Grimm in a new edition. A friend, Mindy Farabee, has written a review of the book for the Los Angeles Times that's definitely worth checking out.

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