What's the most bizarre, stupid, pretentious, hyperbolic, insightful or appropriate book review you've ever read? I'm referring to the blurbs that are placed on the back of most books, usually written by another author, newspaper or magazine. Not to a book review seen elsewhere.
On the back of Lolita, the Penguin Modern Classics Edition, is this from Martin Amis:
'Lolita is comedy, subversive yet divine ... You read Lolita sprawling limply in your chair, ravished, overcome, nodding scandalized assent'
The amount of pretension in Martin Amis is amazing. He inspires a lot of emotion in the U.K. Usually hate. While Lolita is very good, I was not ravished, and I have never ever sprawled limply. Reading or otherwise.
Amis' review stuck in my mind because it was so annoying and so improbable. But what book reviews do you remember?
On the back of Lolita, the Penguin Modern Classics Edition, is this from Martin Amis:
'Lolita is comedy, subversive yet divine ... You read Lolita sprawling limply in your chair, ravished, overcome, nodding scandalized assent'
The amount of pretension in Martin Amis is amazing. He inspires a lot of emotion in the U.K. Usually hate. While Lolita is very good, I was not ravished, and I have never ever sprawled limply. Reading or otherwise.
Amis' review stuck in my mind because it was so annoying and so improbable. But what book reviews do you remember?
I don't think Amis is literally telling everyone what their posture will be after reading Lolita -- he's describing its overwhelming effect on readers. Certainly it's one of the most mind-blowing books I've ever read, and the most humbling; no matter how good I am, no matter how long I try, no matter how hard I work, I'll never come close to that kind of genius. To paraphrase a famous quote, enthusiasm in the praise of Nabokov is no vice.