04/19/07
The blurb is an important form of advertising. It characterizes the thing touted in such a way as to encourage purchase. Or at least attention.
I have in my possession a book I'd like to read. It is called The Atonement, and it appears to be a scholarly treatise explaining why the central conception of Pauline Christianity is not nuts. I would like to see such an argument. So far, the best I've come across is C. S. Lewis's implied argument in Till We Have Faces. But that's hardly a philosophical position upon which one could rationally build a philosophy.
Of course, religions have a much lower bar!
Anyway, I'd really like to read the book. But I have a problem. I find it difficult to take the book seriously. Why? Because of the blurb. Here is the blurb on the front cover, placed right below the book's title:
A heartfelt & clearly reasoned discussion of the significance & necessity of Jesus' death.
What could bother me?
That word, heartfelt.
I have some trouble reading books so earnest that they wear their earnestness on the cover.
I don't care the depth of the earnestness with which the author approaches his subject. Not on this subject, anyway. I care about the clarity and persuasiveness of the argument.
The blurb was written, of course, to coddle Christians. It was placed there to encourage them to read an old book — from 1860, no less! — reprinted in the edition at hand. In general, Christians do not want well-reasoned argumentation. They want something heartfelt.
Well, ick.
Bethany Fellowship, the publisher in question, reprinted this old book ostensibly with people like me in mind. The book is, after all, written for careful, serious thinkers. The first chapter seems to be quite up front about the philosophical problem of the Atonement.
But by including that blurb, it cast a pall of gooey emotionalism on a book that probably doesn't deserve it.
The desire to meet audience expectations can turn the art of blurbcraft into a form of mendacity. I had plenty of such experience when I worked for a little magazine, years ago. I was a very imaginative and concise blurbist. For many years, I wrote the bulk of them. And yet, sometimes the publisher, in his desire to push this piece or that, would take control and ruin things.
He once switched the genre labels we placed over articles, simply because the one I'd placed over my comment was the most arresting, and he thought that the more philosophical piece written by another commentator could use a boost. Forget, though, that the cool word salvo
fit my piece but not the other. It was a cooler word, had more blurbish potential, and thus would encourage readers to read a piece that might otherwise be neglected.
This kind of thinking can backfire, of course. It gave me additional reasons not to write for the magazine I helped edit (something the publisher expressed others some apparent concern to avoid). And in the case of this book in my library by Albert Barnes, it's led me not to read it and comment on it, which might have increased (just a bit) interest in the book and its message. Which is something you'd think the Bethany Fellowship would want.
Go figure.
Why object to heartfelt
? Why does it bother me so?
Well, when we encounter the word, we know we are being presented with something more than clear reason, but also rhetoric especially tuned to convince, even where reason fails. There's nothing wrong with heartfelt
writing, really, but by putting this forward, a flag goes up, and cautious readers like me take extra caution, while incautious readers feel pleased.
It's a signal, then, of a major element of in-group/out-group (esoteric/exoteric) affiliation and recruitment.
A person in philosophy often doesn't want to be recruited. He simply wants to understand. For a philosopher, affiliations take care of themselves. First comes knowledge.
Of course, in other writings, non-philosophical writings, the heartfelt and the prophetic and all the rest are utterly appropriate. I engage in them all the time. But I do so mainly when I have reason to expect agreement on the value or commitment upon which I rest my case.
I long ago gave up on the Atonement as making any sense. So an argument that is heartfelt about it will simply not speak to the values I do have. What values are those? Virtue as excellence through balance, justice as responsibility attributed in a context of liberty, and reasoning as a process of finding the best reasons for believing . . . by evidence and logic. I have no idea whether Albert Barnes could satisfy these demands of mine, because, so far, I've let a bad little blurb prevent me from giving his book a chance.
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