More work of staggering genius. Sigh

DON'T GET ME WRONG, I'm not some kind of insane puritan who thinks we should all be buying books with no prior knowledge of their contents, but I hate the blurb on book jackets. I am not against the bit on a book jacket that factually explains what the book is about, although more and more these days those bits do read like film trailer voiceovers ("it was a time of war, a time of love", or some such drivel). No, what I object to is the other bit, the bit that tells me how wildly, fantastically, amazingly stupendous the book I'm holding in my grubby mitt is.

This irritation comes in two incarnations. Firstly there is the uncredited puff by someone in the marketing department of the publishing house, declaring the book to be "a tour de force" or "an outstanding, memorable and moving tale, brimming with laughter and passion". The author will be "one of the most remarkable writers of his/her generation" and, naturally, a "singular and unique new voice". Says who, exactly? Say the people trying to sell me the book, that's who. A bit of self-promotion is understandable, but when such effusive hyperbole declares everything "brilliant", "superb" and "amazing" it all ceases to mean anything, and leads to a depressing sense of deflation when you come to read the thing, and it's just OK.

The other distinct type of exasperating blurb is the quote from a fellow author, telling me that one of the writer's peers thinks he or she is "a master of narrative and prose" and the book is "wholly fresh and original". Of course nepotism is rife across the arts but nowhere is it more obvious than here, where the bigger name author (it's always a bigger name, of course) is clearly either a pal or shares the same publisher or agent. And it's always the same names cropping up. For years you couldn't pick up any urban Scottish novel without Irvine Welsh telling you how bloody great it was. These days everyone is at it. I don't want Louise Welsh, Andrew O'Hagan or Nick Hornby telling me how awesome a novel is, I want to make that decision for myself. Let the book stand or fall on its own merits. Writing and publishing are undoubtedly hard worlds in which to make a living; but a tad more dignity and a little less hyperbole would not go amiss.

Doug Johnstone is a freelance arts writer.