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| Hearsay: |
Can the wrong blurb ruin a novel’s future? The Jewel of Medina author who had her book dropped in various places because of security concerns thinks a large part of her problem stemmed from having the wrong person blurb the book.
The unravelling of Jones’s book began when her publisher asked for the names of historians who might endorse the book. Jones did not know any personally but suggested several whose work she had drawn on in her research, including Denise Spellberg, a professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas.
Jones, a journalist based in Spokane, Washington, had written what she describes as an entertaining and informative novel about Islam for Western readers, one that might be used as a teaching tool in schools. The book, billed as a love story, history lesson and coming-of-age tale, is about the favourite wife of the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam. “Even though [The Jewel of Medina] is a work of fiction and there is imagination involved, it’s all rooted in history,” says Jones.
So she had no hesitation in suggesting a historian. And that is the problem. The goals and standards of the historical novelist and the historian are not the same. “In retrospect it was an incredibly naive thing to do to send the book to an academic for an endorsement,” Jones says. “They are at odds with each other. One is to inform and entertain and the other is to present strictly the facts.”
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January 6th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Are we really sure it’s the blurb’s fault? I haven’t read the book, but the quote from The New York Times leads me to believe there are other issues here. On the other hand, if The New York Times based its review on only a single academic blurb, there are certainly other issues here. Truth be told, I’m pretty sure any American novelist who tries to fictionalize the foundations of Islam is going to go up against a firestorm. I’m not saying that’s right, but (in the short run, at least) that’s probably just the way it is.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
“In retrospect it was an incredibly naive thing to do to send the book to an academic for an endorsement,” Jones says. “They are at odds with each other. One is to inform and entertain and the other is to present strictly the facts.”
But how will we ever know which is which?
January 6th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Good thing she didn’t do it as a graphic novel or there would have been a 14 year old kid on her porch wearing a C4 dinner jacket. His blurb? “Ka-Blammo, infidel!”
January 7th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Did the Jewel of Medina really fail? I read through the first few pages of the book. I didn’t think it was historical fiction. More pruerient than blasphemous, it was just a mass-market shit.