Some final thoughts on blurbs and logrolling. A reader writes: "One should neither blurb nor review the work of one's own student; the logrolling is all too evident, and blurbs should be accepted for what they are: endorsements by people who are disposed in favor of the author. At times I've refused to blurb, and that's created an uproar; I've also blurbed a book when I did not agree with all the author had said ... because I thought the arguments were worthy of a hearing."
Those are certainly policies that will serve readers well.
2/27/2004
Louis Menand says "The Civil War discredited the assumptions of the generation before it. The postwar reaction was against certitude and philosophical infallibility. There was a sense that the country had been too sure of itself." I wonder if he is reading reactions to two world wars backwards into post-ACW America.
Have you heard about the Alabama Confederate who resigned his commission during the war to become a Southern "champion of Negro rights"? It's buried in this interesting account of Alabama A&M's founding.
John W. De Forest | Melodramatically considered, real life is frequently a failure. - Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
2/26/2004
One should make distinctions in logrolling. There is the friend helping friend. There is one school of thought helping itself and its allies. And there is reciprocity among colleagues and even strangers. These are harmless enough, even charming in the right context. What is noxious is where "material interests" co-exist with published praise.
Let's take the note that ends many reviews. Currently one might read, "Jane Doe is a professor at Winslow University. She lives in Scottsdale with her two poodles Ike and Mike."
How about, "Jane Doe is a professor at Winslow University. She receives speaking fees from symposia organized by the author here reviewed and has appeared in an anthology edited by him, from which she currently receives royalty checks. She is being considered for a literary prize by a committee on which this author sits."
Much better.
And when the publisher approaches a periodical for permission to use a reviewer's quote on a dustjacket, there might be conditions attached: (1) You may not remove the reviewer's name from the quote. You may not say, "'Great!' - Washington Post." You must say, "'Great!' - Jane Doe, Washington Post." (2) If the reviewer is not on staff, if it was a piece contributed by someone, you must say, "'Great!' - Jane Doe, special to the Washington Post."
That would cut a lot of the nonsense out. Of course if publishers want to mislead, it's going to be hard to stop them. Consider the OUP and McPherson, an example given yesterday. Consider this bit from the end of promotional text from the University of Massachusetts Press:
Mary Drake McFeely is an independent scholar. She is author of Lady Inspector: The Campaign for a Better Workplace, 1893–1921.
That's the whole thing. May I suggest a revision? A step towards common decency?
Mary Drake McFeely is an independent scholar. She is author of Lady Inspector: The Campaign for a Better Workplace, 1893–1921 and other books. She is also the wife of author William S. McFeely and the mother of W. Drake McFeely, the president of W. W. Norton & Company.
We all understand anyone with a successful spouse or child will want space for their own reputations. But she's in publishing and they are in publishing, so we want a little more light here than U Mass seems willing to give us.
Which brings us back to yesterday's blog. How about a sticker for William McFeely's new Grant book, the one brought out by Norton in November 2003:
Funding for this project authorized by W. Drake McFeely, President of W. W. Norton & Company.
Would Barnes and Noble apply a label like that? Would book page editors even notice? Oh, we do have problems in Civil War publishing.
(Thanks to the reader who pointed out this Norton connection. It does make mere logrolling pale in comparison.)
Let's take the note that ends many reviews. Currently one might read, "Jane Doe is a professor at Winslow University. She lives in Scottsdale with her two poodles Ike and Mike."
How about, "Jane Doe is a professor at Winslow University. She receives speaking fees from symposia organized by the author here reviewed and has appeared in an anthology edited by him, from which she currently receives royalty checks. She is being considered for a literary prize by a committee on which this author sits."
Much better.
And when the publisher approaches a periodical for permission to use a reviewer's quote on a dustjacket, there might be conditions attached: (1) You may not remove the reviewer's name from the quote. You may not say, "'Great!' - Washington Post." You must say, "'Great!' - Jane Doe, Washington Post." (2) If the reviewer is not on staff, if it was a piece contributed by someone, you must say, "'Great!' - Jane Doe, special to the Washington Post."
That would cut a lot of the nonsense out. Of course if publishers want to mislead, it's going to be hard to stop them. Consider the OUP and McPherson, an example given yesterday. Consider this bit from the end of promotional text from the University of Massachusetts Press:
Mary Drake McFeely is an independent scholar. She is author of Lady Inspector: The Campaign for a Better Workplace, 1893–1921.
That's the whole thing. May I suggest a revision? A step towards common decency?
Mary Drake McFeely is an independent scholar. She is author of Lady Inspector: The Campaign for a Better Workplace, 1893–1921 and other books. She is also the wife of author William S. McFeely and the mother of W. Drake McFeely, the president of W. W. Norton & Company.
We all understand anyone with a successful spouse or child will want space for their own reputations. But she's in publishing and they are in publishing, so we want a little more light here than U Mass seems willing to give us.
Which brings us back to yesterday's blog. How about a sticker for William McFeely's new Grant book, the one brought out by Norton in November 2003:
Funding for this project authorized by W. Drake McFeely, President of W. W. Norton & Company.
Would Barnes and Noble apply a label like that? Would book page editors even notice? Oh, we do have problems in Civil War publishing.
(Thanks to the reader who pointed out this Norton connection. It does make mere logrolling pale in comparison.)
There is a very interesting and important article by Timothy Reese at this site and it has major implications for the chronology surrounding the Lost Order and McClellan's response. One significant point is scholarship's obstinate misdating/mistiming of McClellan's telegram to Lincoln disclosing the find.
Bonus: you get a taste of Reese's unique Crampton's Gap analysis in this piece. Go look.
Bonus: you get a taste of Reese's unique Crampton's Gap analysis in this piece. Go look.
John W. De Forest | Thin, pale and almost sallow, with pinched features surmounted by a high and roomy forehead, tall, slender, narrow-chested and fragile in form, shy, silent, and pure as the timidest of girls, he was an example of what can be done with youthful blood, muscle, mind and feeling by the studious severities of a puritan university. - Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
2/25/2004
News organizations can be fastidious about disclosing conflicts of interest.
I recall a piece in which a newspaper reporter quoted someone in a community association; the editors inserted a kind of "warning" after the quote noting that this person was actually – gasp – a part-time copy editor on their night shift. Potential conflict of interest identified!
When it comes to the book review pages, however, the newspapers are usually running brothels, with nasty conflicts of interest at the larger sheets. New York's expired mag Spy used to have a lot of fun with this corruption in a column called "Logrolling in Our Time." There would be pairs of quotes without comment. For instance,
"Jane Smith has written the Lincoln biography that will stand for a generation." – Joe Doakes, Newsweek
"Joe Doakes surprises and delights us once again with his mastery of antebellum history." – Jane Smith, Washington Post
And so it would go, month after month, column inch after column inch … "Logrolling in Our Time." Needless to say, you could put a strong column together today just by reading the blurbs on the dust jackets in the Civil War section of your bookstore.
I think we all carefully read these blurbs to vett the complements; to the extent we ourselves know the connections between blurber and author, we can use our meager knowledge discount the praise. It is therefore an act of hostility by the publisher against the reader (greater or lesser – you select the degree) when the blurb is made opaque by removing the name. Thus,
"Jane Smith has written the Lincoln biography that will stand for a generation." – Newsweek
It's not user friendly and it lowers deep out of view the sight of one hand washing the other.
I just noticed (this week) that Oxford University Press approaches the blurb quotation style two ways. This is highly unusual because editors strive for consistency in such things. One OUP style is in the usual form: Jane Smith, Washington Post. Almost all their history writers get this manner of blurb. See here and again here. The other way is in the duplicitous style: just "The Washington Post." Thus, "The Washington Post" editorial board gave the complement, not your buddy who free-lanced a kiss-up piece for the Washington Post book page.
Only one writer seems to get that second style of blurb at OUP, a supremely well-connected fellow named James McPherson. See for yourself.
I'm not sure what to make of this myself. I am dead sure what Spy would have made of it.
I recall a piece in which a newspaper reporter quoted someone in a community association; the editors inserted a kind of "warning" after the quote noting that this person was actually – gasp – a part-time copy editor on their night shift. Potential conflict of interest identified!
When it comes to the book review pages, however, the newspapers are usually running brothels, with nasty conflicts of interest at the larger sheets. New York's expired mag Spy used to have a lot of fun with this corruption in a column called "Logrolling in Our Time." There would be pairs of quotes without comment. For instance,
"Jane Smith has written the Lincoln biography that will stand for a generation." – Joe Doakes, Newsweek
"Joe Doakes surprises and delights us once again with his mastery of antebellum history." – Jane Smith, Washington Post
And so it would go, month after month, column inch after column inch … "Logrolling in Our Time." Needless to say, you could put a strong column together today just by reading the blurbs on the dust jackets in the Civil War section of your bookstore.
I think we all carefully read these blurbs to vett the complements; to the extent we ourselves know the connections between blurber and author, we can use our meager knowledge discount the praise. It is therefore an act of hostility by the publisher against the reader (greater or lesser – you select the degree) when the blurb is made opaque by removing the name. Thus,
"Jane Smith has written the Lincoln biography that will stand for a generation." – Newsweek
It's not user friendly and it lowers deep out of view the sight of one hand washing the other.
I just noticed (this week) that Oxford University Press approaches the blurb quotation style two ways. This is highly unusual because editors strive for consistency in such things. One OUP style is in the usual form: Jane Smith, Washington Post. Almost all their history writers get this manner of blurb. See here and again here. The other way is in the duplicitous style: just "The Washington Post." Thus, "The Washington Post" editorial board gave the complement, not your buddy who free-lanced a kiss-up piece for the Washington Post book page.
Only one writer seems to get that second style of blurb at OUP, a supremely well-connected fellow named James McPherson. See for yourself.
I'm not sure what to make of this myself. I am dead sure what Spy would have made of it.
John W. De Forest | "Miss Ravenel, have you any messages for New Orleans" said the Colonel. "I begin to think that we shall go just there. It will be such a rich pocket for General Butler's fingers." - Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
2/24/2004
Grant biographer - and Pulitzer winner - William McFeely has issued a picture book, a la McPherson, through the trade publishing house Norton offering about 160 pages for $32.50 list. (Here's the link to Amazon, but please, just look, don't buy.) The only step lower than this is to include a Cracker Jack prize free with every picture book.
This being such a brazenly commercial proposition, I don't want to spend time on the obvious side of it. What interests me is the Civil War reading public's response to such a naked commercial appeal.
For our purposes "public" will mean Amazon reviewers. Each of these is from a different person. On one level, they are scathing:
* "I'm really not sure why this was published. The collection of photos (which, one would think, is the main point of the book) is pretty uninteresting, and the essays only prove that McFeely hasn't learned any more about Grant since he wrote that overrated bio over twenty years ago."
* "... the words are the only thing to recommend the book. The photos are non-existent! I don't know what the publishers were thinking. I have seen all the photos in here a million times."
* "This is touted as an album of Ulysses Grant photographs. It is marketed as such and sold with this inherent promise. It is with stunned surprise to report that there are exactly twelve photographs of Grant within this book. Yes, I counted them: twelve actual photos."
* "I would've liked more pictures instead of drawings."
I think this list represents everyone who posted an opinion about the book. I'm amazed that these people could disregard the commercial signals surrounding this work, buy the book at a premium price, then complain about not enough interesting photos.
Is this the coffee-table end of the ACW bookbuying public? I don't think so. I think this is part of that great mass audience that drives the Pulitzers. I think McPherson and McFeely understand something we don't, that you can get rid of 90% of the text in an ACW history and still capture enormous sales.
Civil War readers scare me to death.
This being such a brazenly commercial proposition, I don't want to spend time on the obvious side of it. What interests me is the Civil War reading public's response to such a naked commercial appeal.
For our purposes "public" will mean Amazon reviewers. Each of these is from a different person. On one level, they are scathing:
* "I'm really not sure why this was published. The collection of photos (which, one would think, is the main point of the book) is pretty uninteresting, and the essays only prove that McFeely hasn't learned any more about Grant since he wrote that overrated bio over twenty years ago."
* "... the words are the only thing to recommend the book. The photos are non-existent! I don't know what the publishers were thinking. I have seen all the photos in here a million times."
* "This is touted as an album of Ulysses Grant photographs. It is marketed as such and sold with this inherent promise. It is with stunned surprise to report that there are exactly twelve photographs of Grant within this book. Yes, I counted them: twelve actual photos."
* "I would've liked more pictures instead of drawings."
I think this list represents everyone who posted an opinion about the book. I'm amazed that these people could disregard the commercial signals surrounding this work, buy the book at a premium price, then complain about not enough interesting photos.
Is this the coffee-table end of the ACW bookbuying public? I don't think so. I think this is part of that great mass audience that drives the Pulitzers. I think McPherson and McFeely understand something we don't, that you can get rid of 90% of the text in an ACW history and still capture enormous sales.
Civil War readers scare me to death.
A reader has kindly alerted me to the publication last year of Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! - South Carolina and the Confederate Flag by the University of South Carolina Press. This blog often carries news items on flag and heritage fights; this is the first book-length treatment of a flag controversy that I know of. Said to be "a balanced, scholarly, and provocative work" so have a look.
John W. De Forest | "I have just thought why all the gentlemen one meets at the South are so civil. It is because the uncivil ones are shot as fast as they are discovered." - Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
2/23/2004
The old thinking on U.S. Grant, we know too well: Grant is a stolid, centered, military professional who eschews politics to form a close working relationship with the Administration.
Having mentioned Simon on Friday, I should recap all the new thinking on Grant. This is cartoonish, but will have to do:
Brooks Simpson - Grant was a political animal.
William McFeely - Grant was neurotic and unstable.
John Simon - Grant was at odds with Lincoln and Stanton.
Jean Smith - Grant was as good a president as he was a general.
The clearest delineation of Simpson's thesis is in a less recent work, which is linked above. Smith's book appeared last year and had lots of good military details that are seldom mentioned, such as Halleck's repeated efforts to supersede Grant with almost anybody else. McFeely has just laid an egg (in November 2003), which we'll examine this week.
To get a comprehensively revisionist view of Grant, the reader has to digest all four authors. There are worse chores.
Having mentioned Simon on Friday, I should recap all the new thinking on Grant. This is cartoonish, but will have to do:
Brooks Simpson - Grant was a political animal.
William McFeely - Grant was neurotic and unstable.
John Simon - Grant was at odds with Lincoln and Stanton.
Jean Smith - Grant was as good a president as he was a general.
The clearest delineation of Simpson's thesis is in a less recent work, which is linked above. Smith's book appeared last year and had lots of good military details that are seldom mentioned, such as Halleck's repeated efforts to supersede Grant with almost anybody else. McFeely has just laid an egg (in November 2003), which we'll examine this week.
To get a comprehensively revisionist view of Grant, the reader has to digest all four authors. There are worse chores.
John W. De Forest | "Oh! oh! expostulated the Colonel with a cough. "If we are to try all our old gentlemen as traitors, we shall have our hands full. That's something like hanging homely old women for witches. By the way, how are the Allstons?" - Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
