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There is currently a production for stage of the movie "When Harry met Sally" on in the west end of London. There are posters all over the place which have a quote from a newspaper praising the production. The quote is something like "fans of the two stars will be ecstatic". The actual quote in the newspaper went on to suggest that if you weren't a fan it might not be worth going but clearly the poster didn't choose to include this information. The blurb on the back of books is often just as selective and there is an art to interpreting what has been left out. Just as I am sure there is an art to selecting the right things to stick on there in the first place. The history of the blurb itself is interesting in that it is chiefly a 20th Centaury phenomenon. And certainly the word blurb was only coined in 1907. Luckily we know exactly where the term came form and it was from the mind of a certain Gelet Burgess. In 1906 Burgess had written a book called "How to be a Bromide" it had been doing well and in 1907 Burgess went to a dinner where he presented the other guests who were all the great and the food of the literary world with special editions of his book. On the dust jacket he had written a quote about how wonderful the book was. The quote was completely over the top in its praise and it was ascribed to a certain Belinda Blurb. And the name somehow stuck. Gelett Burgess is famous for something else to which is his famous poem:
I never saw a purple cow, He got so bored of people repeating it to him that he wrote a follow up which he could use to outflank fans.
CONFESSION: and a Portrait, Too,
Ah, Yes! I Wrote the "Purple Cow" -- Burgess also was very keen to point out people who were boring, people he called "Bromides". The typifying statements of the bromides which he thought explained their sentiments best was one which he in the end made much more famous. It was "I don't know much about art but I know what I like". |
