Much as I love Open Letter's books, and thrilled as I was to see Georgi Gospodinov's The Physics of Sorrow, I do have to wonder about the prominent placement of this blurb on the (front) cover of the book:
![The Physics of Sorrow blurb]()
'Well, how could you resist putting a blurb like that on the cover ?' you might ask. What great praise for a book to get !
The problem is that surely anyone who sees the blurb assumes the obvious: that it refers to the book in hand -- after all, there are no indications otherwise. Alas, it does not: the blurb comes from a review in The New York Times Book Review from ten years ago -- long before The Physics of Sorrow was even written -- of Gospodinov's earlier novel, Natural Novel.
Is it just me, or does this go way, way beyond even the usual ridiculously loose lines of blurbing-ethics ? Surely, this blurb could not be more misleading -- yes, the praise and description may apply equally well to The Physics of Sorrow, but ... it doesn't: as presented, this is just classic bait-and-switch.
Mind you, I'm tempted to think maybe consumers should be baited in this way in this case -- Gospodinov, and this book, deserve the readers ..... But, no, that really is playing too fast and loose with readers' trust.
I realize we don't, and can't, expect blurbs to be very reliable, or representative of what whoever is quoted actually wrote and meant, but this stretches things beyond breaking. The appropriate place for this blurb would have been on the inside-page of praise where other blurbs are collected -- there's a whole page of more general: 'Praise for Georgi Gospodinov', with a mix of blurbs taken from reviews of his earlier work as well as (foreign) reviews of this work. As is, however -- beyond dubious indeed.
[Incidental observation: Among the 'Praise for Georgi Gospodinov'-quotes is one ascribed to the: "New Journal of Zurich"; it is taken from this review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Okay, maybe the NZZ isn't as English-familiar as, say Le Monde ('The World'), Pravda ('Truth'), or Die Zeit ('Time' (but not Time ...)), but I'm still surprised the publication-name is translated -- especially when another quote is simply ascribed to the far less well-known and prestigious "Berliner Zeitung".
Also: 'New Journal of Zurich' ? Huh ? Oh, wait, I see: that's what Wikipedia says ! Yeah, no, not the way to go/translate it.]
'Well, how could you resist putting a blurb like that on the cover ?' you might ask. What great praise for a book to get !
The problem is that surely anyone who sees the blurb assumes the obvious: that it refers to the book in hand -- after all, there are no indications otherwise. Alas, it does not: the blurb comes from a review in The New York Times Book Review from ten years ago -- long before The Physics of Sorrow was even written -- of Gospodinov's earlier novel, Natural Novel.
Is it just me, or does this go way, way beyond even the usual ridiculously loose lines of blurbing-ethics ? Surely, this blurb could not be more misleading -- yes, the praise and description may apply equally well to The Physics of Sorrow, but ... it doesn't: as presented, this is just classic bait-and-switch.
Mind you, I'm tempted to think maybe consumers should be baited in this way in this case -- Gospodinov, and this book, deserve the readers ..... But, no, that really is playing too fast and loose with readers' trust.
I realize we don't, and can't, expect blurbs to be very reliable, or representative of what whoever is quoted actually wrote and meant, but this stretches things beyond breaking. The appropriate place for this blurb would have been on the inside-page of praise where other blurbs are collected -- there's a whole page of more general: 'Praise for Georgi Gospodinov', with a mix of blurbs taken from reviews of his earlier work as well as (foreign) reviews of this work. As is, however -- beyond dubious indeed.
[Incidental observation: Among the 'Praise for Georgi Gospodinov'-quotes is one ascribed to the: "New Journal of Zurich"; it is taken from this review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Okay, maybe the NZZ isn't as English-familiar as, say Le Monde ('The World'), Pravda ('Truth'), or Die Zeit ('Time' (but not Time ...)), but I'm still surprised the publication-name is translated -- especially when another quote is simply ascribed to the far less well-known and prestigious "Berliner Zeitung".
Also: 'New Journal of Zurich' ? Huh ? Oh, wait, I see: that's what Wikipedia says ! Yeah, no, not the way to go/translate it.]