Publishers are like medieval alchemists. They can take the base metal of a stinking book review and turn it into the gold of praise. James Marriott, for instance, reviewed the oddball guru Jordan Peterson’s last book, Beyond Order. He wrote that “ideas that flit and glimmer in Peterson’s videos look bloated and dead when strapped to the page” and his prose is “repetitious, unvariegated, rhythmless, opaque and possessed of a suffocating sense of its own importance”. Ouch.
But this week the former book-desk imp came across his stern words transmuted by the magicians at Penguin into praise on the paperback version. From his radioactive review glowed words of approbation — “A philosophy of the meaning of life … the most lucid and touching prose Peterson has ever written.” Well, Marriott actually wrote “his philosophy, which is bonkers”, and it’s true, Marriott said that one chapter, about interior design, had “one of the most sensitive and lucid passages of prose he has written”. Faint praise.
