Blurbs: a blurb
Jul. 31st, 2011 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceSo there's this thing we get to do sometimes, where a friend'n'colleague (or occasionally just a colleague, someone we don't know from Adam) will ask us to read a thing they've written and write a blurb for it.
Which is an interesting thing to have happen, in and of itself, because it says that they think that someone out there will pay attention to what we think about a thing.
But more than that: it's an interesting thing to do. Because it's not a review and it's not a critique and it's not cover copy. It's an exercise in unexpected honesty, because there's really no point if you don't like the work; and it's an opportunity to play with words and ideas and connections. It ain't poetry, it's not going to last and it's not going to earworm anybody*, but it needs to sing a little, it needs to catch a reader's attention in some way. It needs to reach beyond its avowed purpose.
So, yup. I wrote this for m'friend'n'colleague Joel Lane's new pamphlet of crime stories, Do Not Pass Go, out now from Nine Arches Press, and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, from reading the stories to putting the words together.
Joel Lane documents a life we don’t quite live, in a city we can’t quite find: half glimpsed and half imagined, we know it’s out there somewhere. Waiting, maybe. Mixing fear with desire, reputation with regret. Touching the blood-beat of our secret hunger with the rhythms of a music that never felt alien till now. Wasted lives, with never a wasted word. It’s an extraordinary achievement: vivid as neon, real as rain. Devastating.
*In other news, I have been earwormed all morning by Rupert Brooke. How does that even happen?
Which is an interesting thing to have happen, in and of itself, because it says that they think that someone out there will pay attention to what we think about a thing.
But more than that: it's an interesting thing to do. Because it's not a review and it's not a critique and it's not cover copy. It's an exercise in unexpected honesty, because there's really no point if you don't like the work; and it's an opportunity to play with words and ideas and connections. It ain't poetry, it's not going to last and it's not going to earworm anybody*, but it needs to sing a little, it needs to catch a reader's attention in some way. It needs to reach beyond its avowed purpose.
So, yup. I wrote this for m'friend'n'colleague Joel Lane's new pamphlet of crime stories, Do Not Pass Go, out now from Nine Arches Press, and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, from reading the stories to putting the words together.
Joel Lane documents a life we don’t quite live, in a city we can’t quite find: half glimpsed and half imagined, we know it’s out there somewhere. Waiting, maybe. Mixing fear with desire, reputation with regret. Touching the blood-beat of our secret hunger with the rhythms of a music that never felt alien till now. Wasted lives, with never a wasted word. It’s an extraordinary achievement: vivid as neon, real as rain. Devastating.
*In other news, I have been earwormed all morning by Rupert Brooke. How does that even happen?