{"id":99677,"date":"2016-06-28T10:30:17","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T14:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=99677"},"modified":"2016-06-28T18:01:15","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T22:01:15","slug":"songs-of-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/06\/28\/songs-of-myself\/","title":{"rendered":"Songs of Myself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hosting a national blurb contest.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"LoGcover\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Walt Whitman, the \u201cAmerican bard,\u201d who was named after a shopping mall in Huntington, New York, where I grew up, is often credited with having invented the book blurb. On the spine of his debut, Leaves of Grass<\/em>, he had printed in gold leaf a line teased from a letter he\u2019d gotten from Ralph Waldo Emerson: \u201cI greet you at the beginning of a great career.\u201d Emerson was right: Whitman continues to rank among America\u2019s finest careerists.<\/p>\n

Gertrude Stein, unable to break through to the literary mainstream, wrote herself a novel-length blurb entitled The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas<\/em>. Writing as Alice, her live-in companion, she described at length Gertrude\u2019s prodigious, if misunderstood, genius. This 252-page press kit was an immediate best seller, prompting Stein to embark on a national tour, which she described in Everybody\u2019s Autobiography<\/em>, a sequel explaining why you should hire her for speaking engagements.<\/p>\n

Ernest Hemingway\u2019s first short-story collection, In Our Time<\/em>, was published with no fewer than six blurbs\u2014on the cover. I can\u2019t remember if he won the Nobel before or after he finished taping the beer commercials. With Toni Morrison, it was definitely before: Pulitzer, Nobel, Chipotle wrapper, in that order.<\/p>\n

Will my novels secure my literary legacy the way Morrison\u2019s and Hemingway\u2019s did theirs? Will I ever see my name engraved on a line of high-quality toilets, I sometimes wonder, after hours of furious literary labor? Will I be immortal, like Whitman, transcending with my \u201csong\u201d the conventional boundaries of self? Will Kohler, the premier name in luxury flushing, ever ask me to be their spokeswoman? <\/p>\n

I questioned my own commitment to literary greatness last January when I balked at my editor\u2019s suggestion that we print a blurb from Edmund White on the front cover of my new book of fiction, Dating Tips for the Unemployed<\/em>. The cover?<\/em> Isn\u2019t it a bit vulgar, all that selling?<\/em><\/p>\n

It was a blurb written for my previous novel, Iris Has Free Time<\/em>, which had received a number of fine write-ups, none of them enough to make a difference in my literary fortunes, none of them from the New York Times<\/em>. \u201cThe only press is press lost,\u201d I waxed Proustian on a cold January night three years later, still smarting from the major reviews that book hadn\u2019t received. It was the night before my new publisher\u2019s publicity and marketing meeting. My second book was coming out that June. My second book, my second chance \u2026<\/p>\n

And so I consented. \u201cOkay,\u201d I typed in reply to my editor, during that long dark night of public-relations brainstorming. To take my place in the literary canon I would have to stoop lower than Whitman and Hemingway both, I realized, as I pressed send. Literary legends, watch out! I will do more than lick the floor. You\u2019ll know my genius when I dig a hole and make love to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to host a contest,\u201d I announced the next day in a conference room on Park Avenue. \u201cYou ever read the blurbs on the back of a book and wonder, Has this person even read the book? I\u2019d like to host a \u2018National Blurb Contest\u2019 in which we invite everybody and anybody to blurb my book sight unseen, sending up the style of overheated literary praise. \u2018See your blurb and byline printed on the back of the year\u2019s most-buzzed-about book of fiction along with advance praise from these assorted luminaries!\u2019 I said, reciting the copy I\u2019d written to advertise the contest, before reading the names of those who\u2019d written me blurbs already. Literary name dropping \u2026 bombs away! \u201cEdmund White, Tom McCarthy, Martin Mull, Kurt Andersen, Diane Keaton, Patricia Marx, Jonathan Ames, Andrea Martin, Dave Hill \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, ads for the contest went live on websites like The Paris Review<\/em>, Electric Literature, and\u00a0the Rumpus, and I was sending e-mails and announcements to everyone I know and don\u2019t know on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and via postcard. A few days after that, I was contacted by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt\u2019s legal department: \u201cBecause the blurbs were solicited with the promise of a prize\u2014publication on the back of the book\u2014you must disclose in an asterisk next to the winning blurb that its writer received compensation for their endorsement.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the end of March, I was reviewing submissions. \u201cThe winning blurb will be selected by an anonymous panel of judges,\u201d I told people when they asked about the selection process. I didn\u2019t tell them that the anonymous panel consisted entirely and exclusively of me.<\/p>\n

The submissions poured in, nearly two hundred windy endorsements from a fabulous variety of would-be blurbers:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cFanny Hill without the sex!\u201d \u2014Bruce Sherman<\/p>\n

\u201cSuperbly evocative of the fraught politics of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance during the Peninsular War.\u201d \u2014Ari Samsky, M.A., Ph.D., medical anthropologist and author of The Capricious Critic<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI will always remember the day I first became aware of Iris\u2019s luminous prose. It was a Tuesday. I had a lunch date with Simon. He had the Nicoise salad.\u201d \u2014Noam Cohen<\/p>\n

\u201cIris owns a baby snow leopard but I can\u2019t prove it. Someone should call someone.\u201d \u2014Daniel Kibblesmith, writer of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cErudite as Crudites\u201d \u2014Dora McKelvey, Ylvis enthusiast<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this book, five bucks for tacos at the walk-up window, a condom and a sleeping bag\u2014you\u2019ve got what we call on the streets \u2018heaven on the streets.\u2019 \u201d \u2014Mark Sutz<\/p>\n

\u201cOf all the books I have read in the last 25 years\u2014and there have been many\u2014I can say with some confidence that this is probably one of them.\u201d \u2014Emily Epstein, photo editor, The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis book is a triumph in a way that others tried and failed \u2026 it\u2019s the perfect size and weight for pressing flowers and leaves.\u201d \u2014Sean Greeson<\/p>\n

\u201cIris Smyles has cut through all the fear and bellicosity of the election season in order to reveal the true historical origins, and cruel future intentions, of today\u2019s jihadist nightmare.\u201d \u2014Vince Passaro, author of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t read this, you are failing yourself and the person sitting directly to your left.\u201d \u2014Adrian Todd Zuniga, founder and host of Literary Death Match<\/p>\n

\u201cBuy this book, then read this book, then tell me how it is, and maybe let me borrow it.\u201d \u2014John Stintzi, poet, M.F.A. Stonybrook University<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a book about tennis there sure isn\u2019t much tennis in it.\u201d \u2014Sarah Peters<\/p>\n

\u201cBook\u2019s binding is of decent quality.\u201d \u2014Geoff Schwartz, commercial real-estate developer<\/p>\n

\u201cIf George Orwell\u2019s Down and Out in Paris and London<\/em> and Malcolm Lowry\u2019s Under the Volcano<\/em> mixed their sperm and inseminated Cynthia Heimel\u2019s Sex Tips for Girls<\/em>, and if the resultant child was raised in a communal home with Paula Vogel\u2019s And Baby Makes Seven<\/em>\u00a0and Zoe Atkins\u2019s The Greeks Had a Word for It<\/em>, that child might be Iris Smyles\u2019s Dating Tips for the Unemployed<\/em>.\u201d \u2014Noah Milman, filmmaker<\/p>\n

\u201cProvocative and wildly entertaining \u2026 Smyles\u2019s latest pokes piquant fun at the zeitgeist\u2019s journey du jour, from the rags of loneliness to love\u2019s embarrassment of itches.\u201d \u2014Emily Votruba, rabbit breeder<\/p>\n

\u201cRiveting \u2026 Written by a veteran British journalist who has an evident passion for Pakistan and can render its complicated history with pristine clarity, this is a book that should be read not only for its vidid drama but for its urgent message about the untapped power of girls.\u201d \u2014Sarah Beller, writer<\/p>\n

\u201cIris Smyles\u2019s shattering Dating Tips for the Unemployed<\/em> changed my life. Literally. There\u2019s nothing left to say. I\u2019m giving up writing and getting a real-estate license. These are the last words I will ever publish.\u201d \u2014William Souder, Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning author of Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of \u2018The Birds of America\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNever have I considered rectal bleeding and petit mal seizures so worthwhile\u2014because I didn\u2019t know a book could induce so many spontaneous orgasms (33!) in one day. This book should come with an FDA warning. If this book doesn\u2019t win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, then I\u2019m not a Nobel Laureate in economics.\u201d \u2014Scott Stossel, editor in chief of The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Whitman sang a pretty catchy song of himself, and not just in his poem: he penned his own reviews, writing under a fake name. It was he who, in an essay about Leaves of Grass<\/em>, christened himself the \u201cAmerican bard.\u201d And what do you know? It stuck. Walt Whitman sang his own praises. Isn\u2019t it a bit vulgar, all that selling?<\/em><\/p>\n

Whom should I allow to sing mine?<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/em>Winner of the National Blurb Contest Announced!<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t read this book and I didn\u2019t have to. On the cover, it said IRIS SMYLES and that\u2019s more than enough for me. Like logos for Coca-Cola, Fritos, and Entenmann\u2019s, Iris\u2019s name assures me that what\u2019s inside \u2026 is so yummy.\u201d \u2014Alec Baldwin*<\/p>\n

*Alec Baldwin was paid for this endorsement.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Iris Smyles has published two books of fiction: <\/em>Iris Has Free Time<\/a> and <\/em>Dating Tips for the Unemployed<\/a>, which is out today from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She is the literary editor of <\/em>East, the<\/em>\u00a0East Hampton Star\u2019s new magazine, and splits her time between New York and Greece.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hosting a national blurb contest. Walt Whitman, the \u201cAmerican bard,\u201d who was named after a shopping mall in Huntington, New York, where I grew up, is often credited with having invented the book blurb. 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