Or Perversity and the Anti-thesis of Everything Courtesy of the World of Publishing

In my constant search for gems, I found a 400 word blurb for A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Haven’t read the book. Can’t comment, but the blurb that appears on every bookseller web site encapsulates the negativity of the age and the encircling, stultifying dogma of market researchers desperate to exploit the masses with their money-spinning belief system. Feel pissed off, then buy this book. It’s got to be a winner.

Nice cover. Let’s have a look.

“spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives”

Oh yeah. Circling the lives of interlocking spellbinding wotsits. Love it. Imagine that, going round and round looking down on some saddos. Clever! I’ll buy that.

“the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates”

Oh yeah. Shit happens. We’re all doomed. It’s written in the stars. Didn’t you know, mate?

“Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to”

Uh! Make mine a pint of crème-de-menth!

“the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time”

Salvation or oblivion! That’s me on a Saturday night! I’ll buy that.

“Sly, startling, exhilarating work”

‘Sly’ ey?. A bit devious. Bit of a trickster. Cheeky chappie, like me. Ker-ching.

So there you have it. This is selling. The best bits. It’s easy to accuse me of overthinking, as people do, but Marketing isn’t reality, as we’re often told. Nielsen have been collecting data on what we buy, when we buy and why since 1931. They feed it back to the marketing people so they in turn write, Winston Smith-like, non-sequiturs described above. It’s time someone said, ‘I’m Spartacus’.

There really are other world views and belief systems out there, although none that make so much money for shareholders. It doesn’t all have to be going down the plughole, or should I say, ‘circling the inevitable waste disposal system down which we must all inexorably sink”. OMG! Pass the whisky bottle.

Or as George Harrison sang:

“I don’t know how you were diverted 

you were perverted too 

I don’t know how you were inverted 

no one alerted you”