The Penguin Blog

'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.'

Not yet they aren't. But one of the most famous opening lines in modern English literature seems to me a good place to start writing about where to begin when reissuing an old book.

A friend of mine over at HarperCollins - in fact the wise chap that employed me here at Penguin a few years ago - had to hire a new copywriter a while back. He was looking for a good way to separate the wheat from the chaff and came up with the rather neat idea of inviting all applicants to supply the current blurb of a book they were fond of together with an entirely new blurb of their own devising. They then had to explain why theirs was better.

Improving on what has gone before in publishing is usually not so difficult since jackets tend to stay on books for many years and by the time publishers get around to reissuing them they look rather tired if not plain antediluvian. Here's an example, appropriately enough, from the Eighties:

 

The blurb on 1989's Nineteen Eighty-Four doesn't sound much like a novel at all:
Newspeak, Doublethink, Big Brother, the Thought Police – George Orwell's world-famous novel coined new and potent words of warning for us all. Alive with Swiftian wit and passion, it is one of the most brilliant satires on totalitarianism and the power-hungry ever written.

Maybe. But it sounds like a bit of a slog.

When it came to doing the reissue (out in July) it didn't take a lot of head scratching for me to decide that a) it was time I re-read one of my favourite books and b) the starting point for writing this blurb had to be the excellent opening line, which manages to be perfectly ordinary until its very last word - which rips the rug out from under your feet. Nice work, George.

By listing some of the words that Nineteen Eighty-Four had added to the English language, the old blurb was trying to get across the book's weight, its sheer importance. Unfortunately, as if with a lot of attempts to make things sound worthy, Nineteen Eighty-Four just comes across as dull. Something to be admired rather than liked.

I think we can do better than that.

‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’

Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster, the Thought Police uncover every act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening, and awakens to new possibilities. Despite the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin to question the Party; they are drawn towards conspiracy. Yet Big Brother will not tolerate dissent – even in the mind. For those with original thoughts they invented Room 101 …

This edition is not the Penguin Modern Classics edition. This edition is the one we want to get into the hands of school kids, to grab their short attention spans. So yes, putting the key words - Big Brother, Thought Police, Room 101, Ministry of Truth - in there is important, but that is no reason to leave the story or the characters out. The great thing about Nineteen Eighty-Four is that it is so unsettling, it is so terrifying and bleak (and not much fun as satire, either). To get that across we need to know what's at stake - what Big Brother is opposed to. We need Winston and Julia, their hopes and love, their humanity. Without Winston and Julia there is no tension, no story.

A book might be a classic, big names may rate it, teachers might tell you it is an essential read. But that's no reason not to sell it as if it's brand new - to some people it will be - or not to try to seduce the sceptical reader into turning to the first page despite themselves.

At the same time as Nineteen Eighty-Four we're reissuing Animal Farm:

Both books feature stunning covers by Shepard Fairey - if you're going to grab people, get them by the short and curlies. But don't let either cover art or blurbs distract you from the words within.

Any lazy or awful blurbs on good books you'd like to share with us? And can you do any better?

Colin Brush
Senior Copywriter

Nineteen Eighty-Four (ISBN: 978-0-141-03614-4) and Animal Farm (ISBN 978-0-141-03613-7) are re-issued on July 3rd.

Buy the pair on Amazon here.

PS I'm offering a pair of these Orwells to the first comment that correctly points out the (ahem) deliberate mistake I made on one of the new covers.

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A word about words

Words. So easy to take for granted.

If you live wherever people gather, words are mostly everywhere you look. But how often do we ponder just exactly what they're doing - not saying, but actually doing?

Three weeks ago I had ample opportunity for word pondering. Against my - not-so, as it turns out - better judgment I was sent to the Arvon Foundation at Lumb Bank, which is located just outside Hebden Bridge - 'lesbian capital of the North' I was informed by at least two people - to spend five days with Dark Angels.

No. Dark Angels are nothing to do with James Cameron's TV series about a bike courier in post-event Seattle. That'd be silly. In fact Dark Angels run a series of courses on creative writing in business. That's pretty much all I knew when I headed up to Yorkshire on a wet Monday evening. Two trains and a very small bus later I trudged down a steep road to Lumb Bank, an eighteenth-century converted mill-owner's house once owned by Ted Hughes. Over the course of the next few hours I was joined by our two tutors, John Simmons and Jamie Jauncey; Steve, who runs Lumb Bank; my five fellow participants Lyn, Julie, Molly, Sue and Marilyn; and Ted Hughes (the cat, female, a bit butch - surely a resident of nearby Hebden Bridge?).

For five days six complete strangers would have to cook, eat, light fires and generally live together while exploring and coming to terms with a number of - sometimes painful - things about themselves as writers. This wasn't writing as therapy. It was therapy as writing.

Each morning, we'd gather in the converted barn and, with the chanting out the way - you might well laugh, but it aerates the blood and clears out last night's cobwebs, never mind the bloody chakras - we'd get down to some serious writing exercises designed to get to the meat of ourselves as writers.

In no particular order - though I suspect the order we followed was crucial to the madness in John and Jamie's method - we were asked to come up with the title and opening page of our autobiography; we had to write our version of the first paragraph of a published novel; we listened to music and wrote what we heard; we committed automatic writing and haiku to paper; we personalized Simon Armitage's Not the Furniture Game which is about Ted Hughes (not the cat, the other one); we formed an imaginary business, writing its founding story and its launch campaign. There were many other activities of a writing nature that I shan't write about here for the sake of brevity.

In-between, while we scratched our heads over our daily homework activities, there were walks, a lunch with Simon Armitage - yes, him again, much wine, piano and guitar playing and singing (not by yours truly) and plenty of time - for me at least - to realise just how complacent I'd become as a copywriter after ten years.

Give me a book and I'll slap a blurb on it in half an hour if need be. I pride myself on getting the job done quickly, pertinently and without fuss. I work on approximately two hundred titles a year so there's no time for mucking about. Yet when I started at Penguin I'd be tinkering with each blurb for days trying to come up with the right formulation of words: a decent structure, pace, tension, a good stab at reflecting the author's style. In short, putting together the most compelling proposition for our ideal reader standing in a bookshop.

Sure, I was green and was learning on the job. And with experience came all the tricks, the instant recognition of this or that requirement and, of course, a certain wisdom that speeds the process up. But wisdom too easily comes at the expense of wonder and fun. The words lose their excitement, playing with them becomes less of a joy. So you tend to experiment less and take fewer risks (if only because you know now that certain retailers and authors are - with very good reason - risk averse). In knowing the rules of the game you become bound by them. And that is never a good place to be.

My week with Dark Angels was about breaking down barriers inside myself. It was about how exciting words can be - not just what they say, but their sounds and patterns and effects, the rhythms and the sheer ruddy joy of playing around with them.

Words do so many things that we easily take for granted, and if ever we take words for granted we're no longer seeing them properly. Worse, we're no longer listening to them. So thank you, John and Jamie and Dark Angels, for bringing me back to the words.

And if you can't spend a week with Dark Angels yourself? Then get hold of a decent volume of poetry. There you'll surely be inspired by other writers, giddy with their own delight in words.

Isn't that the most wonderful place to be?

Colin Brush
Senior Copywriter

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Nice work, if you can get it

As the new hire, I have been asked if I could write a post about my first few days working at Penguin and, because I haven’t actually signed a contract yet and they might at any moment choose to evict me without notice or pay, I have decided it might be a good career move to agree.

The first thing I could say is that it’s possible that some people here at Penguin headquarters have perhaps not ‘moved on’ from Sam the Copywriter, for whom I am maternity cover. Often when I am talking to one of my colleagues, their attention and their gaze will drift to a point somewhere off in the distance and they will begin to loudly reminisce. ‘Sam always produced such excellent copy. Sam was such good fun. Sam was so very pregnant.’ And when I tell them, for not the first time, that I’m not Sam the Copywriter, only then does their stare focus on the very centre of me and, with a frown and considerable distaste, they say, ‘No. No you’re not.’

Still, it’s work, which is a good thing for a young man to be doing. Yes, I’ll miss the long days spent deciding whether to watch Dragons’ Den on Dave or QI on Dave +1, finally settling on QI only to awaken from an accidental nap to discover with delight that – oh! – Dragons’ Den is on. But the bills don’t pay themselves, I suppose, not in old London town, anyway.

So I have determined to drag myself from bed each morning, take my race number and strap the bedraggled corpse of this septuagenarian company to my back, to have it ride me and my talents to greater success, more product shifted, bigger executive bonuses, &c.

...

I am not being entirely honest here. In fact, I am avoiding seriously describing working as a copywriter at Penguin for three reasons.

The first is that when I have attempted to describe my new job to my friends I tend to have some difficulty in convincing them that it is a job at all, and further difficulty persuading them that it is a job I could possibly deserve.

The second is that, even with incredulity suspended, I can see how it could be deeply annoying for somebody that I actually get paid for this. I come into an office full of lovely and enthusiastic people and get to read some of the finest books ever written (so far my charges have included Of Mice and Men, The Big Sleep, In Cold Blood and Rabbit, Run). Then I write a paragraph or two about them. There are a range of teas and coffees available. If that all gets too tiresome for me, I can choose to go and 'work' in a café-like room with a view over the river.

The third reason is that a lifetime of being a curmudgeon has not really prepared me for describing such a ... delightful set of circumstances. Just what do you say? It's fantastic. Just now I had to check through some covers in the Boys Own Books style. They're beautiful. It's exciting to be around these great, wonderfully designed books. Everyone is very nice. Sam left me half a box of Cornflakes. Life is good.

And I at last have the power to correct a regrettable mistake from the history of this blog. Let it be known that, contrary to what you may have read, Transformers was about the most fun it's possible to have in a cinema. That's right – down the memory hole you go, Sam's opinion.

Alan
Copywriter

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