4 Blurbs for 2025
A roundup of some recent blurbs I've written with passing thoughts on blurbs in general
I’ve probably written somewhere between 100-200 blurbs over the last 15 years.
Though it can be a lot to ask to have time to consume a book in time to speak on it for use as a promotional tool, I’ve always thought it’s a thoughtful part of the tradition, where someone who’s managed to have any leg to stand on w/r/t tastemaking can give back some of the energy that has been granted to them by others.
Despite my continuing distaste for publishing decorum in general, there’s something to be said about announcing the arrival of new edges to the horizon of what literature is and can be. Like a christening, it helps define a space for expectation around an entity that otherwise would require as much time from every reader to establish entry—and though each reader’s perspective is always unique, there’s something nice acknowledging access points and pointing at bridges that might make the larger conversation around a book have a frame.
Often, a blurb from someone I respect on a book has often been all that I might need to pick it up. “Oh shit, Brian Evenson likes this,” I’ve said many times without any further information necessary to complete the sale. At the same time, I’ve always been a little offset when I see blurbs that are dialed in—using the name rather than what they might allude to in hopes of tacking a pitch to the object.
For as many “good” blurbs as I’ve seen, there are probably at least a couple dozen that incite cringe, using in-the-box language to plaster on accolades because one can, and not necessarily because they’re true. Truly, it takes time and effort to sit down with something and conjure up a way of speaking about it that doesn’t just seem like a gesture. We all know the tropes: tour de force, voice of a generation, stays with you long after its over, couldn’t put it down—actually, my mind goes blank trying to think of the examples, as it should.
It turns out there’s a weird line between hyperbole and how to describe something in a way that is meant to engender honest interest, and often this line ends up so perverted that it ends up being even more meaningless than the practice itself. A good blurb can go a long way though, especially in how it relates the style of the object via aura, rather than the object’s active attributes.
Speaking of Brian Evenson, I think he holds the title for the sickest blurb ever, from Gilles Deleuze: "Altmann's Tongue strikes me as powerful, by reason of the mode of the language and the unusual style, by reason of the violence and the force of the words... I admire this book." In this case, the sickness of the blurb comes from the fact that how the fuck did you get one from Deleuze? The closest I came to the same is asking Michael Gira to blurb my first novella, Ever, to which he replied something like, “I have received your request that I blurb your book, but I WOULD NEVER HAVE TIME TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT.”
I’ve already written more than I meant to about my personal views on the act of blurbing. After publishing Molly, I started get so many requests, sometimes as many as five per week, that I have pretty much started passing unless I have to, which pains me in a way, but also there is a time and a place for this kind of work, and for me, for now, that time is thin. I’ve always poopooed the trope of writers who are too busy to give back and ignore blurb requests like spam, but at a certain point, it’s someone else’s turn.
With all that to say, here the last 4 blurbs I’ve written, for 4 excellent works that recently have dropped or will soon. I share these with hopes that you’ll preorder, as it really does make a difference to the life of the book.
April 10th from Fitzcarraldo
Every sentence in this delightfully bizarre techno-memoir could stand alone on a page and command allure. Like splicing the miniature divulgences of Édouard Levé with the ominous bombast of Jenny Holzer, Flower makes automatic nonfiction feel like sci-fi, and it’s instantly unforgettable.
July 24th from Penguin
No one writes like Michael Clune. With his debut novel Pan, in the uncanny tradition of The Story of the Eye and Project X: A Novel, his beguiling ability to fuse the universal with the arcane smashes new ground for the bildungsroman, dexterously stacking up spinning plates until before you know it, there’s nothing left but changeling magic. I didn’t want it to end, and I’m still trying to figure out how it transformed the inscrutable doom of adolescence into a symphonic odyssey with style to spare.
Hothouse Bloom by Austyn Wohlers
August 26th from Hub City
With its euphonious investigation of the ever-shifting borderline between the existential and the mystical, Hothouse Bloom immediately establishes Austyn Wohlers as a vital and extraordinary wellspring of the divine. Akin in turns to Reddonet, Lispector, and Tarkovsky, hers is the rare kind of debut that resets the bar for the field at large, convalescing fervent depth and resolve where it’s gone missing underneath the wearying veneer of our everyday.
The Endless Week by Laura Vazquez
Sept 30th from Dorothy
They say a truly great author can write about anything and make it interesting, and with The Endless Week, Laura Vazquez proves that true on every page. If you’re in search of an ultra-contemporary novel that shatters all the rules with inimitable humor and style to spare, look no further—she is here.
i loved austyn's book
“Stunning debut” is another that might could retire.
I like this take on blurbs. It’s generous and makes room for writers being good to each other when we can. I recently got a blurb for my upcoming book from a writer whose work I’ve loved for ages. It might be the best blurb ever written. Not because the writer gushed about my book but because she did so in very different (hilarious, creative) ways than the usual blurb.