Johnny America

 

Blurb

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They ap­proached him to blurb a book on birds. “But I don’t know any­thing about birds,” he said. “Sure you do. Every­one knows some­thing about birds,” they said. “We’ll send a copy of the book your way. If we like what you write we’ll use it, if we don’t we won’t. Now, how can we reach you?”

He went through a few drafts be­fore com­ing up with this num­ber: Of all the bird books I’ve read, this is hon­est­ly the best bird book of the lot. I’ve learned so much about birds. This book is great.

“Hot dog! You’ve done it,” they said

A cou­ple months lat­er he re­ceived a call. “We saw what you did with that bird book. Where do you stand on airplanes?”

He blurbed books on glob­al warm­ing, con­flict di­a­monds, dwarfism, new age heal­ing, Paul Gau­guin, monotheism.

“We want to as­sem­ble your blurbs in a col­lec­tion. Could you put some­thing to­geth­er by Wednesday?”

He could.

He pol­ished up a few un­pub­lished blurbs for the fans that be­lieved they’d al­ready read every­thing he’d blurbed and mailed his manuscript.

“What is this crap?”

“My book of blurbs.”

“This is a book of crap.”

“Is it?”

“No, no. Wait, wait. I was read­ing an­oth­er col­lec­tion of blurbs, by some­one else, a less­er blurber. This col­lec­tion, your col­lec­tion, this is ex­cel­lent. This is mag­ic. You will be a star. You are a star. Who can we get to blurb your book? How do you feel about Em­per­or Penguins?”

Filed under Fiction on January 26th, 2009

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