Word: blurb
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There are hundreds of writers waiting in varying stages of despair for their phone to ring. They dream of giving interviews, being summoned to lionizing appearances and literary lunches. A reviewing assignment would be welcome; a request to blurb a fellow author's new book would not go unconsidered. But life is unfair. Those who have get, and those who could get sometimes choose not to. Like J.D. Salinger, who has spent most of his 69 years ducking the sort of publicity that most authors would kill...
That's how I experienced the accident. However, my account is nothing like what's been reported in The Crimson. The headlines of the stories alone have been irresponsible: Sophia A. van Wingerden's August 4th article, "Passengers Escape; PBH Bus Aflame," and its inside blurb, "PBH Bus Bursts into Flames" are erroneous and sensational. Again, the same writer in August 7's issue wrote another story, entitled "University Has No Leads in PBH Shuttle Bus Fire," whose inside blurb read "PBH Van Explosion," To set the record straight, the bus which caught on fire last Friday was neither...
...crossing to Rio -- "fantastic," Janis recalls, offering further a sort of book-jacket blurb that would surely kill sales: "Nothing hairy about it!" Michel and his sextant navigated a course straight as the kerf from a sawmill blade. One day he told his family they would be in Rio at 1 the next morning. At midnight, they could see land. With scant instruction -- he had had a couple of lessons in 1976 -- Michel was now a credible yachtsman, and a diesel mechanic and carpenter to boot, what with all the breakdowns that never cease on a boat -- any boat...
...learned a few things on my own since, and modified some of the things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from Danny Simon." That kind of thing has been said by Danny's first partner, Kid Brother Neil. But actually, the blurb is from Woody Allen, with whom Danny collaborated on NBC's The Colgate Comedy Hour for a season in the mid-'50s. These days Danny's pupils are not apprentices but paying customers for classes he conducts privately in Sherman Oaks, Calif., where he lives, and in three-day seminars...
RESPONSIBLE EDITORS, therefore, must suppress their Pavlovian impulses long enough to ask some serious questions: Is the issue they are presented inherently newsworthy? What is the credibility and good faith of the source? Do his or her charges deserve a front-page lead story, or will a blurb on the inside suffice? Does a controversy actually exist, or are they being manipulated into precipitating...