(Un)Forgettable Pull-Quotes

Michael Chabon pokes fun at himself over at his website. He lists all the pull-quotes his publicists would rather people forget, starting with his first book:

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988)
“This first novel, for all its cosmopolitan air, is parochial stuff, underplotted and overwritten.”

“The sensibility is precious and overwrought. One adjective is deemed insufficient when three or more will do…Too much tarted-up description soon becomes ennervating: get on with it.”

Chris Petit, Times of London

“Michael Chabon’s first novel is apparently something of a rave over there, which to some insular minds untouched by fall-out from the great American dream may seem the biggest mystery of all in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.”

“Some of the comparisons the novel has excited are enough to make Scott Fitzgerald revolve in his grave and one would dearly love to turn George V. Higgins loose on its more outrageous fopperies.”

Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian

“If the theme sounds a little like Bright Lights, Big City, it’s a smaller town and a much dimmer light. Bechstein is downright annoying. The surrounding characters are eccentric but never well developed and when one of them dies it’s hard to really care.”

“This is Michael Chabon’s first book. Somebody must have liked it.”

Jane Sutton, United Press International

Read them all here.