GOOD NOVELS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN heavily buffeted in the marketplace of ideas. “Many books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered,” said W.H. Auden, who had clearly never heard of Wuthering Heights. So it’s natural — essential — for publishers to do their best for the titles they believe in, particularly for debut novels, to give them a leg up in a crowded ecosystem.
Increasingly this means getting pre-publication praise from other writers, and the more the merrier. Fifty million Booker-shortlisted authors can’t be wrong, goes the logic. But these encomia surely have little effect on browsers and readers, not least because so many of them are generic to the point of anonymity. (To say nothing of the question of whether these writers really read the whole book they are praising in the first place, or are just playing their part in the dance. Some reputable figures appear on so many back covers that reading
