...be the blurb...
“Younger writers are always looking for "blurbs," one of the few words that sounds exactly as awful as the crime it's describing.”
-Brian K. Vaughan-
Most men and beasts are blurbless. We live lives unkempt and unruly, not needing a simplification of our services to satisfy our specialties. But I want a blurb. I want to blurb and be blurbed. I stare at the back of books and think, “that should be me”.
The word "blurb", means a short description of a book, film, or other product written for promotional purposes. It was coined by Gelett Burgess in 1907, attributing the cover copy of his book, “Are You a Bromide?”, to a Miss Belinda Blurb. His definition of "blurb" was "a flamboyant advertisement; an inspired testimonial".
Who doesn’t appreciate some great flamboyance and inspiration! I’ll testify that I do.
The blurb is promotion. It is an advertisement. And as a man who has worked in advertising let me state here clearly that the only good advertisements are ones that don’t exist and/or are for non-existent products.
The Love Toilet, Crystal Gravy and Schmitt's Gay all come to mind.
So as an existent man, a finished product if you will, and one repellent to advertising, why do I want to be blurbed?
“I gave up writing blurbs because you make one friend and 200 enemies.”
— Leslie Fiedler
My quest to be blurbed has been short lived. Extremely short lived. So short to be certain this is it. Right here and now is my first attempt at getting blurbled. Wait…is it blurbed or blurbled? The verb of blurbing could be blurbanged, or blurbgled, or blurbangledled. I’ll settle for blurbed (silent invisible umlaut).
Anyhow…before I beg your ear off I’d like to explain where this blurbery sensation cessates from.
My life is a mess. I’m a blurbless blurb. I have bird seed dribbling down every corner of my ledge, a rabid possum drooling at me each morning from a fence post, and a finger that needs chiropractic care every other minute. I’m surrounded by records, and comic books, and blankets and dust mites staring at a nipple shaped pinwheel hiding a pile of rocks on my drawing desk next to a turtle puppet I bought for a baby that doesn’t exist. My life is a mess.
But to be fair all lives are. Existence is a sloppy portal. We, hairy aquatic skin sacs of thought, process ourselves and others, portending purpose and meaning to our repetitive gaits stumbling drunkard from alley to alley. I hear the crow caw and bid it hello. I smell the rat eating pizza and dream we are dinnermates. I see all the writing on the big brick wall and find meaning in its messages as though they are just for me.
Each moment of being is an unedited paragraph.
I’m a pile of words unsure if I’m poetry, or just a 3.5 star yelp review focused on a mouth-roof searing slice of that Rat’s pepperoni pizza. And every day I add sentences to my pages. When introspective moments of noteworthy pretense emerge I tab them as footnotes in the hope I’ll return to their research. But I’m fully aware these moments are likely just smaller font ambitions that will be overlooked as I turn my pages. At the end of each chapter, I attempt to summarize the informative gains and plot points that might encourage me to read further.
Ravenous and inspired I might read myself in a sitting. A life worth living is a tawdry 90 page paperback. Bored and belabored, my fate could fail much quicker. I’ll land in the cardboard recycling bin lining my apartment door. I’m a poorly written fantasy novel, hundreds of pages of character introductions and relationships, but lacking in the magic and myth that might make my oil painted cover worth another bend open.
But the blurb gives me hope.
The blurb adorns our front or backside, a simplification of the promise of our premise. If my blurb was up front, it would work to bring you in. Come see what you might see, and hold hope for entertainments of knowledge and camaraderie. The backside blurb is likely paired with cousins of thought, multiple authors summating interpretive what was’s. The blurb, whether it is front, back, side to side, or even relegated to the pages of someone else’s paper, feels meaningful. When done well it is not a simple description of what was, but rather a beckoning of what can or might be.
If I were blurbing this blog I’d beckon “a furry man flails at finding fellows to furnish his function with fabulous findings”, largely because I like the sound of the letter F, but also because to blurb is to take and make focused.
The blurb is a trimmed enticement, come hither and tether yourself to this man and his makings. And it is also a recognition of experience and completement. Blurbing correctly requires engagement with that which you have blurbed. You can blurb the unknown, but that blurb is just dust cloud, coherent as a vision in the moment, but once settled simply a sweepable generic dirt.
“Before publishers' blurbs were invented, authors had to make their reputations by writing.”
-Laurence J. Peter-
But why would a blurb befit me?
Blurb.com tells me that blurbs “grab readers’ attention, engage their interest, and compel them to further explore a book’s content.” My hope is that if I am blurbed I continue. This is my vanity unhinged. The blurb will give me hope of me. And then the sadness and sleepiness settles in. My self doubt is unblurbed without words. My pages are blank and my pen runs dry.
The blurb is my only way out. If I can be blurbed, I’ll have proof. Proof that all this thissing was more than this.
This is great, this is fun, this is therapeutic and this is what I needed to break the grog of a night slowly sleeping on tortilla chips while Sylvester Stallone arm wrestles my dreams from me. I’m so off track though. Like I said, life is messy. Life is a mouth of crusty tortilla chews and green salsa while Kenny Loggins asks you to meet him halfway across the sky. This might all seem quite over the top, and that is because it is.
Life is the theme song to the movie Over the Top.
But I can learn from life. The mess is the magic. My yesterday might not make sense today but that doesn’t mean there is no tomorrow. But I still want that blurb. I still want to take that look over my shoulder, and see the simplicity of what I’ve done to keep doing.
Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People’s begins with three blurbs, and they are enough to tell any reader what they are going to find when they crack open the book:
"Go after the job you want–and get it!
Take the job you have–and improve it!
Take any situation–and make it work for you!"
That resonates with me. Not that I want a job, or a job improvement, or even a situation that works for me, but that in one sentence I want to help people understand and open my book.
It is hard to blurb yourself.
“I’m a beached snack bowl!
He sleeps and then he doesn’t!
A man who walks a lot!”
There is no way I am winning any friends or influencing anyone with those blurbs. But this process of blurbing might be more helpful than I anticipated. By blurbing I would be condensing myself to an exact idea. I’d be better than Cliff Notes.. My I would be as uppercase as it could be. Is that my blurb?
“I”
Too simple. No one wants to read about me if I’m just I. I can do better.
“I am alive!”
And so is everyone else. No one wants to read about anyone who is everyone.
“CansaFis Foote is a man in search of a blurb.”
It is an honest statement but not necessarily an enticing proposition. The point of the blurb can’t be the blurb itself. We blurb to get past the blurb into the guts of our live’s novel. What if I blurb as someone else? Like say if Oprah were to blurb me she might say…
“This guy should join my book club and become more literate…but in the meantime you’re gonna get a Fis, and you’re gonna get a Fis. Everyone is getting Fis!”
-Oprah Winfrey-
She would say that because I am comically obligated to pantomime Oprah through the act of giving away things. That is what she does, or at least used to do, or did one time? I think she gave away a car. Or maybe it was bees…
I can’t imagine Oprah would ever give me a blurb though. I mean I just did imagine that, but I couldn’t imagine doing it again. Actually let me imagine that again…
“CansaFis Foote is some dude that I don’t know who lives in Oakland and asked me to write a blurb for him which I was obligated to do because he gave me lots and lots of cash.”
-Oprah Winfrey-
No matter how many times I envisioned it, it just didn’t seem true. I guess that means the blurb has to come from a point of honesty. To blurb well you need to have experienced that which you are blurbing. So the only man that might be able to blurb me…is me.
I took a deep breath, a quick toothy teeth chatter, and said something simply and quickly that I knew to be true about myself and my purpose.
“CansaFis Foote is a Garfield obsessed sax playing sasquatch who writes online in search of cheap laughs and substack subscribers.”
There it was.
A snapshot of the core of my existence. My first blurb. It is by no means a perfect blurb, but for today it can do. The key to any pursuit is that first step. You can’t start at the end of the book reading backwards and hope to ascertain the meaning as the author implied. Well that is of course unless you start at the end of the end of the book. The ass of the book if you will. Because there, at the book's bottom, lies the quickest means of grasping its meaning. The blurb.
By blurbing ourself we stare our ass in the mirror and determine which pimples are worth popping. We can sum our core and our essence. We can be engaging, compelling and inspiring others to come and explore us. So find the time and make an ask of yourself. Ask yourself who you are in a few words and just blurb it out. Wear it on a tshirt for all to see. Be the blurb you always wanted to blee. Blank you. Blank you blerry bluch.
"The mess is the magic."
Whoa. What a fantastic line.
blurbless you for this