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Here’s what a blurb is: you asking (read begging) a writer with a lofty reputation (loftier than yours, anyway) to bestow upon your book a few spontaneous (that is, semi-coerced) words of ecstasy. It’s you singing your praises in the voice of another, basically. That a person with even a modicum of self-awareness would submit to such a floridly craven, histrionically insecure practice is, to me, shocking. And yet it is the done thing, what editors and publishing houses expect. Long story short, I knuckled under. I agreed to use a blurb on the jacket of my new book, Didion & Babitz.
The rebel spark in my heart, though, wasn’t completely snuffed. If I did get an…
