BlurBs Blurbs can often be found on a b...

BlurBs
Blurbs can often be found on a book’s back cover and sometimes in the opening interior pages. Blurbs consist of short sentences, sometimes whole paragraphs, devoted to developing the ethos of the volume’s author or authors, and/or the contents of the work. Typical to the language of the blurb are the following alphabetized adjectives: acrobatic, adversarial, apparent, artful, astute, awe-inspiring, beautiful, big-hearted, bookish, brilliant, brutal, captivating , careful, cautionary, charming , compelling, curious, daring, deft, dubious, enchanting, endearing, essential, evocative, excellent, fascinating, first-rate, flagrant, faultless, funny, garish, grammar- changing, happy, harrowing, haughty, haunting, honest, humorous, indelible, ineffable, imaginative, impressive, inventive, irreverent, jocular, laudable, laughable, likeable, lively, lovely, lush, marked, masterful, merry, meticulous, mournful, murky, nascent, note-perfect, notorious, obsessive, oppressive, opulent, original, passionate, poignant, precocious, promising, rare, relentless, remarkable, revelatory, rich, riveting, skillful, solid, strange, striking, subtle, surprising, tender, timeless, thoughtful, unforgettable, unpredictable, vibrant, visionary, warm, whimsical, wise, xerotic, youthful, zany. There are many nouns used in the blurb (most notably, “debut”, as beginning authors are common users of the blurb), and certain whole phrases (example: “tour-de- force”) are quite common. Here follow examples of the quintessential blurb:

“Jamie Iredell can spin around with a disc in his hand and then throw that disc incredible distances. He can also do freakish things with words.”
—Michael Kimball, author of Dear Everybody

“This is a book you will like if you like other books like this. Look at it, look hard, and decide if this blurb surpasses your own wit and literary acumen. Then purchase the book for the retail price, avoiding sales tax if possible. Or place it gently back where you found it, being careful not to bend the pages or smudge the cover.”
—Zach Dodson, a Publisher Who Knows

“Blake Aldridge’s ‘James Uncovered’ is a tour de force of modern christian statuary. In its bright and pulsating curves and shadows the attentive reader’s rewarded handsomely. Like a fried egg. Or a chocolate strawberry. Or a cow’s head in a bright burning sky. The small galaxy of encounters and flesh (or edicts) that is ‘James Uncovered’ bristles with fierce intelligence and keen psychological wine-insight. Rumi himself would blush and Plato on his brightest day would kneel down in terror because young Blake’s sure touch and disarming potencies are capable of taming the most savage monsters as well as inflaming the most spoiled housepets—and I would know: I am one of them! ‘James Uncovered’ is more than a must-read it is a life-essential: a beautiful gift for the beginner, a delicious surprise for the expert and a total and ravaging miracle- enlightenment for both and everyone in between.”
—Ruaun Klassnik, author of Holy Land 

“This is the book that you should buy for your stepfather next Christmas, if you want to show the unctous, lecherous asshole exactly how you feel.”
—John Dermot Woods, author of The Complete Colection of People, Places, and Things

“Blurb (blûrb) noun, hence transitive verb. A brief endorsement or encomium usually on a back cover or book jacket. Coined by F. G. Burgess, presumably as a portmanteau of blurt and burble, or else purely for its onomatopoetic quality. The sound is produced by bringing the lips together for a mildly plosive /b/ followed by a liquid /l/ as the tongue rolls from the back of the upper teeth to the lower lip for a comically fat-sounding /ur/ gargling at the back of the throat before terminating with the voiceless stop of a second /b/. Jamie Iredell’s The Book of Freaks bears the hallmark of truly great literature: it at once delights while making imitation inconceivable.”
—Man Martin, author of Days of the Endless Corvette

“Jamie Iredell’s The Book of Freaks is in alphabetical order. My two-year-old thinks he is the absolute shit.”
—Todd Dills, author of Sons of the Rapture

“A preternaturally gifted new writer [with] a voice that’s street-smart and learned, sassy and philosophical at the same time. He damns progress and upholds the ethics of eternal return. Enchanting . . . a startlingly fresh work, an innocent and humorous story about the strangeness of life. It is about youthful dreams . . . and how some of these dreams were fulfilled, and about what happened to those dreamers after reality and old age arrived. It is also a book about ourselves, those of us who shared and identified with the dreams and glories of our heroes.” —Josh Russell, author of My Bright Midnight

“When I was 47 I killed a child with a razor bat and a pocket mirror. I had to beat the shit out of that childbaby face so good if it was going to die and I surely wanted it to, for it wore gold slacks, the best slacks to this day still I’ve ever seen. The good thing is that after I killed the child I brought it back to life, but then I killed it again for smiling. Point is, I have the gift of reanimation, which I picked up because I sometimes look at books and can imagine how writing a book works. Jamie Iredell likes fucking metaphors, but this blurb isn’t a metaphor at all. Anything you read in this hot penis-lifting amalgam of Ire-language is meant in private by Mr. Jamie to stand for something else because he thinks metaphors are really powerful. But me, I really killed a child. This is a confession. The child’s name was Spencer and he was clean. Next year when I turn 59 I’m going to unmetaphorically kill your fucking dog because fuck your fucking dog.”
—Blake Butler, author of There Is No Year

“The Book of Freaks was pretty good. I liked how the author used American English in a neat way, and how different things and different ideas appeared on different pages, also how there some sentences were long , others short, and the variety was cool. I also liked how there was some poetic stuff, use of imagery and metaphor, etc. I believe the author used simile very effectively. I could not find an instance of foreshadowing that stood out in particular but this does not mean there was no foreshadowing, only that I did not catch it while reading. Despite the lack of foreshadowing, I think the book was pleasurable to read and also informative and edifying and in general I liked it.” —Christopher Higgs, author of The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney

“I’m too fucking busy.”
—Mrs. Babcock, The Compilers’ Wife

“Clarifendorfum orgefic nallus! Iredell kraddad undistrom addai, blostrum wives, a cat, orange reduction, plarebic destrata a mystery novel calissandic Future Tense. 10,274 ignan . . . o worg.”
—Adam Robinson, author of Adam Robison and Other Poems