A Wordle Anatomy of Gary Stheyngart Blurbs
by Maria PopovaMapping a catalogue of promiscuous praise.
Gary Shteyngart might have authored a few books and earned himself a Moby Award for best book trailer, but his true claim to fame seems to be a much more intricate form of literary art: the book blurb. So prolific is his blurbery that Brooklyn-based writer Jacob Silverman decided to have some fun with it and launched The Collected Blurbs of Gary Shteyngart, “a catalogue of promiscuous praise.”
Naturally, I decided to in turn have my own quick-and-dirty fun with it, collected the text from all the blurbs to date, and dropped them into Wordle for a good old-fashioned weighted typographic footprint of Shteyngart’s veneration vocabulary:
Apparently, he likes his books funny, patriotic, and written by people named Jennifer or Adam.
Next, perhaps a bored geek might find some joy in putting together an algorithmic Gary Shteyngart Blurb Generator, in the style of the Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator?
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.
