The Impossibility of Jacket Copy

The human brain, when you start to think about it, is really fucking weird. Or rather, just about all of it would make sense, if not for the fact that, far too much of the time, we have very little control over what it does and thinks. This is not a post about “Yeah, I'll just have one more drink and then call it a night,” and then three hours later you're a pharmacist in Tijuana filing the 501C(3) paperwork for your parrot rescue organization, though I suppose it's connected, but rather about how powerful and permanent certain triggers are in making decisions. It's about how we develop our own systems of sorting the vast amounts of information in the world and how powerful those systems become and how difficult (perhaps miraculous) it is to break out of those systems, even when you know how restrictive those systems are and even when you know that you are personally and powerfully affected by other people's systems. So, of course, this is a story about jacket copy.

Jacket copy is the stuff on the outside of a book publishers put there to get you to buy the book. They usually compose some combination of blurbs, summary, and author biography and one could argue they are one of, if not the most, difficult forms of human expression. I mean, all you need to do is take a vastly complex work of literature, identify both its artistic heart and its most marketable features and smash them together in a hundred word statement that is both honest and effective. And do it on a deadline. While you're writing copy for like, twelve other books. And you're an intern. The reason jacket copy tends to be cliché ridden nonsense, is because it is impossible. And it gets harder when you really think about how readers read jacket copy. But this post isn't about jacket copy, this post is about a particular experience my brain had with some particular jacket copy, and why my brain, in that moment, with its systems totally failed. (Or was still right, but in the wrong way or for the wrong reasons, because, spoiler, I did read it, and I did not like it, but not for the reasons I thought I would not like when I thought I would not like it from this blurb.) (If this were simple it wouldn't be fun.) (Hey, man, this is post-post-modernism. Everything is uncertainty in parentheses.)

Here's how that particular jacket copy opens: “Jake Whyte is living on her own in her old farmhouse on a craggy island, a place of ceaseless rain and battering winds. Her disobedient collie, Dog, and a flock of sheep are her sole companions, which is how she wants it to be.” Here's how my brain with its systems reacted: “Fuck that.” Don't get me wrong, I loves me some meditative fiction (The Death of Virgil if you're looking for a masterpiece of meditative fiction) but there is a particular kind of meditative prose I absolutely can't stand and if there is a chance some of that meditation happens in the context of a sweater and a cup of tea, I go from can't standing to actively fleeing. (Nothing against meditating mid-sweater-and-tea, but for some reason the prose that usually describes those moments just grates on my inner ear.) And when I scanned down to the big sum-up, it actually got worse as the closing key words are “stubborn hopes, unexpected beauty, and hard-won redemption,” which made Josh's brain go: “Oh yeah, totally fuck that.”

Then I saw the book pop up on The Millions most anticipated list and its description of the book hinted at something far darker, far more abstract, and far more interesting than what was implied by the lines quoted above. The galley was still at the store so I filled in the middle: “But every few nights something—or someone—picks off one of the sheep and sounds a new deep pulse of terror. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, and strange rumors of an obscure, formidable beast.” Now that is the kind of neo-horror existential crisis I can get behind. Sure it's still jacket copy, but I've read enough of it that I can (usually) sift through the jargon to get a sense of things. Add in that another bookseller friend started reading it and so, I read it.

There's an analogous problem, probably more relevant to poetry, but with some general applicablity, that I call “Bukowski's 10% Problem.” I love Bukowski. Not soft-spot-for-my-youth love him, like actually, respect him as an artist, but about 10% of every Bukowski collection is utter garbage. Ten percent of his poems are what his detractors accuse his oeuvre of being. When I find a new collection of poetry that intrigues me at the bookstore, I flip to a random poem and read it. If I like it, I keep going. That's how I discovered Brian Turner, James Tate, Karyna McGlynn and Kevin Young, among others. That's how I've discarded dozens more. But what if some, or all, of those discarded poets have Bukowski's 10% problem? What if pretty much all poets do (Except Mary Oliver. She is just terrible.) and whether you like poetry or not (as most people seem to not) depends on whether or not you happen to have formative encounters with selections from the 10%?

The wrong blurb. A bad cover. A recommendation from your friend with terrible taste in music. The mood you happen to be in when you first encounter the book. How old you are when you try to read it first. Given all the barriers, it is almost a guarantee that you will not read the perfect book for you. The odds of that perfect book making through all the gates are essentially impossible. Or at least it would be, if another statistical factor didn't compensate.

Connecting with great literature isn't impossible because the world is filled with great literature. If you haven't found a great book, it's because you either, actually had no interest in finding a great book or you didn't really look. Which is not to say that every book you pick up, even every book you pick up with an optimistic perspective, will be a good book. Every now and again you're going to try (and perhaps even finish) a total piece of shit. (It reminds me of something Anthony Bourdain once said when asked about his worst meals. To paraphrase he said, “If you eat to avoid a bad meal, you'll never have a great meal.” Not quite the same thing, but I think it's such a great idea I decided to cram it in here anyway.)

The awful thing about traditional publishing is the disconnect between the person who writes the book and the personal who sells it. The great thing about traditional publishing is the disconnect between the person who writes the book and the person who sells it. That disconnect allows for assessment, description, and discovery. It means that whatever gets to potential readers is a discussion not a statement, it is an opinion of some distance, it is an open and direct attempt to connect with readers rather than an open and direct attempt to connect with an artistic vision. Yes, every cynical thing you've heard about blurbing and publicity are true AND every person who blurbs and publicizes loves books and is working their assess off for not much money, generally in very expensive cities, to transfer that love to everyone else. Some times it works, sometimes it doesn't, and some times that other thing happens where phenomena beyond our control conspire to create something we could never imagine.

Questions About Reading

A friend of mine, who is a teacher, asked me if she could teach my post How You Find Books, How Books Find You, in the context of choosing independent reading. That is bucket-list awesome. What is even awesomer is her students asked some very thoughtful questions, the kind of simple, direct, but also really important and challenging questions, young people are uniquely capable of asking, and because I am a responsible adult, I answered them as best as I could. So here are their questions and my answers. Fair warning, I list a little towards the shmaltzy at times, but, hey, I'm talking about reading to kids. That's gonna happen.


What made you pick up The Haunted Bookshop instead of you other choices?

As a bookseller I've developed a really close relationship with the publisher, so I know there's a good chance I'm going to like anything they send me. They told me this book was a great celebration of bookselling and given that I was at the end of a very exhausting bookselling project I was looking for a "remind me why I do this," kind of experience. FYI, I started reading Seiobo There Below and it also would have been the perfect book. Its long, lyrical, and artistic sentences, the complexity of the images, the fact that its chapters are number with a Fibonnacci Sequence (1, 2, [1+2] 3, [3+2] 5...), the hyperfocus, the flat-out gutsyness (I'd probably prefer to say "ballsiness" but feel free to use "gutsyness") of attempting a book like this, are all things I love about books and were pretty much completely absent from the books I read for the panel.)



What strategies do you use to identify if you will enjoy a book? How do you know before you start reading it/how do you essentially choose your book?
Sometimes I listen to suggestions. There are some authors whose books I will always read. Sometimes I'm intrigued by the plot. Sometimes I happen to start reading and am intrigued by the style. The important thing is that I listen to my own brain when I'm interacting with a book. Do I feel interested? Do I feel as though my mental ears have perked up? Do I want to know more about whatever the book is saying? If yes, I'll read the book. But if I don't "hear" my brain doing those things, I probably don't read the book.


What genre of book is your favorite? I love mysteries.

I read pretty much everything. Mysteries (my favorite is The Maltese Falcon) Sci Fi (my favorite is The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov) Graphic novels and comics (The Sandman), poetry (Cesar Vallejo & Walt Whitman) and books that don't really have a genre that people usually just consider literature. (Ulysses) I guess if I had to pick just one genre, I'd go with books people consider literature because those are the most important to me. They're also the books that keep giving no matter how many times I read them.


I hate reading. My teacher says that means I haven't found the right book yet. What's the right book? [Quick aside. As a writer, reader, and bookseller, this one was a hell of a challenge. Getting it was like saying to your friend, “Hey want to go for a hike today?” and then YOU ARE IN THE HIMALAYAS AND IT IS TIME TO HIKE. Anyway, I did my best.]

For me, it was The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper. For some reason, that particular story showed me what the imagination is capable of. For you it could be The Golden Compass, or Feed by M.T Anderson or Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos or Northern Lights by Jennifer Donnelly, or The Hobbit or Moneyball or The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, or American Born Chinese (which is a comic book) Ender's Game or Vampire Academy or a cookbook or a magazine or maybe you'll be playing one of those really good video games and realize the game makers are actually using the storytelling tools books use...The thing is, you're your own person living your own life, so there's really a ton of different right books out there for you, but if you approach every book you read assuming you're going to hate it, there's a good chance you're going to hate no matter how good it is. But, if you keep you're mind open, the next book might be the right book.


How do you force yourself to read books you don't really like?

If I'm reading a book I don't like it's because I have a responsibility to another person. Whether it's because I'm going to write a review, or give critique, or evaluate it for an award, like the panel I wrote the essay about, I've promised someone I'd read it and so I read it. I also try to remember that I can learn almost as much from books I don't like as from books I do. I just have to ask myself “Why don't I like this book?” and then actually try to find the answer. For example, this one book I really didn't like in part because I thought the writing was careless. One sentence was “He was slim but broad.” Those words don't really go together. I know the author was trying to say something like “He had a thin waist and broad shoulders,” but that's not what was written. I didn't like it, but the careless prose made me think about careful prose.


We don't read your blog. Can you tell us why you dislike conventional stories?

It's not that I don't like conventional stories. I do, especially when I'm reading to relax, but I don't feel like most conventional stories ask the questions I'm asking. I want to know about the stories people will be telling in 10, 50, 100 years and I want to know what people will be like in 10, 50, 100 years. Conventional stories usually don't think about those people. I also think the problems in the world are different from what they used to be. They're more complicated and more confusing. I believe complicated and confusing books help me think about complicated and confusing problems. Finally, everything that's conventional today, used to be unconventional. Before Jane Austen, (I'm sure Ms. Boncek has mentioned her) nobody wrote about realistic relationships from the perspective of women. And nobody wrote with Jane Austen's sophistication. But now, lots of writers write about realistic relationships and try to have her sophistication. I believe reading and supporting unconventional books now, helps make sure that those people living 100 or 200 years from now will have their own Jane Austen from our time.


What made you want to be a writer/critic?

I just started writing stories and poems when I was about 12 or 13 (maybe even a little younger) and haven't stopped. I don't know why I wrote that first story, or the second, or even really why I do it today, but it is who I am. Being a critic grew out of that. In order to be a better writer, I tried to figure out how the books I liked worked. How did they express their ideas? Why did they make me feel what I felt? Kind of like taking a clock apart to see how it works, except that, because these are books and words, the clock kept telling me the time even after I had separated all the gears and springs and coils. With books, even when you pull apart all the words to see why they made you think about something, they still make you think about that something.


Is there any book that has the same meaning for everyone?

There are books that have been read for long enough by enough people that we've come to a kind of agreement about what they mean. We can all kind of agree that Too Kill a Mockingbird is about looking past the surface and skin color to the real person within. And it's important to work at agreements around books. Books are important, in part, because they help us have difficult discussions, because we learn about the world and ourselves by how we agree or disagree over books. But the most important part is what happens between the book you're reading and your brain. And because no one else can ever really share your brain, there aren't any books that have the same meaning for everyone.




How would you describe your own writing, since you said you dislike conventional books?

I write what's in my head. Sometimes what's in my head is a story that goes back and forth around an event, has text boxes in the middle of the page, and includes a poem. Sometimes what's in my head starts at the beginning, goes through the middle, and ends at the, well, end. I kind of like to think of it as if I'm a scientist in a lab, trying different ways to express different ideas.


How long did you take to edit this essay?

Since I wrote this for my blog, I probably went over it four or five times over the course two days or three days finding better ways to say things, making sure everything makes sense, and fixing mistakes. If I'm writing something that I'm going to send to someone else to publish I usually do at least four or five drafts, sometimes completely re-writing whatever it is I'm working more than once. It can take weeks or months or sometimes even years.

Does It Matter What You Read?

Yes.

OK, before moving on to my argument, a bookseller's caveat. I give every individual purchase by every individual the benefit of the doubt. Since I can't know the motivation for a particular book purchase I will never judge any particular book purchase. For all I know, that copy of Ulysses is going to be set alight and thrown down open manhole into a chunky, stinking, sluice of human refuse. That said, the Number 1, 2, and 3 bestselling paperbacks in independent bookstores are the first, second, and third volume in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. So, though I will never judge a particular purchase of Fifty Shades of Grey, there does seem to be an alarming pattern here.

At least last time I scanned the book-o-sphere, most people disagree with me, arguing that the action of reading in and of itself is so freaking awesome that it doesn't particularly matter what one is reading. (And many if not most might go a second step and accuse anyone who might argue otherwise of “snobbery,” but I'm beginning to think an exploration of the “snob” idea deserves its own post.) The whole “as long as I/he/she/it/they are reading” idea is really only half of a statement, because it contains an implied, “instead of.” When someone says “as long as they're reading,” they usually imply “instead of watching TV,” the assumption being that reading is neurologically better for your than watching TV. To me, this idea is kind of like saying something is safer than shooting yourself in the face. It's true, but not meaningful. Are we really making an argument for reading by saying it's better than the most narcotizing experience people can have without taking actual narcotics?

But even then I'm not entirely sure. Is reading Twilight (which I'm just going to use as a symbol for “substance-less entertainment containing an accepted low-quality of craft,” which doesn't mean I think you shouldn't read Twilight if you want to, which might seem like a contradiction of the point I'm making, but stick with me, nuance and reasonableness approacheth.) better than watching No Reservations, Louis, or The Wire? How about playing Knights of the Old Republic or Minecraft? And what about watching Casablanca or Citizen Kane or an Akira Kurosawa movie? How about taking a long hike? Of course, it all comes down to your definition of “better,” which itself asks the question, “Why do we read?”

Education, literacy campaigns, and everybody in the book-o-sphere argue that reading is important, that it is entertaining AND helps us grow as people, by developing our imagination and strengthening our empathy. We all accept that reading is both fun and productive, and I think we all accept that some books are really only entertainment and some books provide the substance we need to improve as human beings. Just like on TV, there's the trash that many people enjoy (Congratulations, Jersey Shore, winner of the Twilight Memorial Symbol for Substance-less Entertainment Award for Television) and then there's more substantive shows many people also enjoy; Mad Men being a big one at the moment, but there's also the aforementioned The Wire, No Reservations, and Louis, as well as Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and, if I'm to trust the number of scholarly papers written on the subject, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And just like on TV, I don't think it matters what you read for entertainment. Just like how no one can tell you what to find sexy, no one can tell you what to find entertaining. (For me, with books, I simply cannot be entertained if the sentences suck, but that's just me.)

The problem is the exclusivity of entertainment in our society. There is nothing wrong with entertainment reading, but there is a problem when most people read exclusively for entertainment. That pattern of behavior is what leads to the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy being light years more popular than any other book at the moment.

The thing is, entertainment, though an important part of human life, doesn't really help us solve any of our problems. To put this another way, entertainment (which I have nothing against) doesn't contribute to our ability to be citizens in a democracy. A quick example. By any tangible measure Barack Obama's 2008 campaign platform was the most popular platform in decades. He won 54% of the popular vote, and Democrats took both chambers of Congress. The Republicans responded by doing absolutely everything in their power to obstruct and prevent any aspect of that platform being turned into policy, essentially taking a big runny dump on the very idea of representative democracy. And the punishment they received; the biggest power shift in Congressional history. This point isn't even partisan because interpreting it cuts both ways; either an alarming percentage of the population fell for Republican bullshit or an equally alarming percentage of the population had no idea what they were voting for in 2008. Of course, terrifyingly, both are probably true.

Though a lot of factors go into how we make political decisions, I think a population truly capable of the critical thinking engendered and strengthened by consistently reading literature would be a lot better at voting for what they actually believe in and supporting policies that meet the challenges we face. We could “read” the messages of politicians and pundits in a critical light that exposes underlying assumptions, explores the implications of applied policy, and sorts the statement from the bluster. We could vote for ideas, rather than through vague emotions cultivated by ad campaigns.

But this whole argument rests on how we answer the question “Why do we read?” And not just why we read, but why we do anything, play video games, watch TV, movies, sports, take long hikes, exercise in general, travel, etc. Sure we all deserve leisure, relaxation, mindless fun, entertainment some of the time (frankly, I'm totally cool with 65/35 entertainment/personal growth, I'd even take 70/30, but I'm looking at the NYT bestseller list and pretty sure we're around 98/2, maybe 95/5) but the point of entertainment is personal stasis. One of the primary pleasures of entertainment is that it asks nothing of us. But it doesn't help us make a better world. And if a better world isn't a goal, well, what's the point of anything?

One final caveat, before wrapping this up. For reluctant readers and readers who are still developing basic reading skills, it doesn't matter what they read as long as they read. For them, whoever they are, that whole neurological point applies, with the goal that eventually, they develop the skills needed to productively read literature every now and again. But for the rest of you...

So if you want to grow as a human being, yes, it does matter what you read. You should read books with ideas new to you. Books with images that extend their meaning into your life. Sentences that make you work at their interpretation. Words you have to look up in the dictionary. Scenarios that challenge your understanding of morals and ethics. Descriptions of people you could never meet in your life, places you could never visit, obstacles you could never surmount. It is not elitist to argue that if we want the empathy and intellect needed to solve the world's problems we should read books that stretch our empathy and challenge our intellect. And it is not snobbish to suggest that in our society of constant entertainment it would be beneficial and enjoyable to occasionally read for a different experience.

So if you've only read entertainment recently, go into your locally owned independent bookstore and ask for a challenge. Put effort into reading it. Look stuff up. Underline. Annotate. Break a sweat. Work your brain. You don't get a chiseled physique if you only lift 5lbs weights and the same goes for your brain. And when you're done, the new Sookie Stackhouse or Robet Ludlum spin off will be waiting for you.

(Pictures from Awesome People Reading)