Out of My League was the first of my participatory journalistic books (Paper Lion, The Bogey Man, Shadow Box, Open Net). With its publication came the inevitable comparisons to Walter Mitty, which was not quite accurate since James Thurber’s memorable character always succeeded in his daydreams, whereas from Out of My League on I have suffered a steady series of humiliations at the higher levels of football, hockey, golf, and so on. What happened to me is bound to happen when an amateur is thrown into the company of professional athletes. It is inevitable.
Ernest Hemingway seized on this. I had sent him the galleys of the book in the hope he would provide a quote, a blurb. Actually I was brazen enough to ask him for an introduction! Not long before the book went to press, a telegram arrived from the Mayo Clinic where Hemingway was being treated for depression. He had provided a blurb. In it was the lovely line about what I had gone through being “the dark side of the moon of Walter Mitty.”
The publishers slapped the quote on the jacket, the letters of Hemingway’s name in oversize capitals, and I have no doubt that the success of the book was helped immeasurably by its being there.
I have a poet friend who is opposed to blurbs—believing that readers ought to be able to make up their minds about a book without being influenced by a quote that has probably been induced by a trade-off—one writer promising to praise another if the favor can be returned. He even dislikes the word itself and thinks it should only be used to describe the sound a scuba diver makes when close to drowning.
I hold no brief on this matter, one way or the other. But I’m awfully glad that telegram arrived from Rochester!