Sprung!

Les 'Raging Bully' Murray - Part 2

This news is now on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald.
A man would say anything -*ANYTHING* to cover up for bad judgment calls. Here's the latest on Les Murray's "publish my wife's novel and I'll give you your blurb" deal offer to publishers Puncher and Wattmann.

Contacted by the Herald yesterday, Murray dismissed the letter as "a joke" and said his intention was to say no to the publisher, "but I said it in a baroque way". Told it did not read like a joke, he replied, "It reads like, 'Piss off', actually."

For 40 years, he said, "people have been preying on me for free services and this is only a desire to stir trouble. People are forever asking me for blurbs. I've been

pestered unmercifully." Anyway, he said, "blurbs are nonsense - they're all hyperbole and hype, a publishers' bad habit. Read the contents of the damned book."

In his letter, he writes, "My endorsement does carry some clout, and I try never to cheapen it … "

Murray told the Herald "various other publishers" had seen his wife's book, Flight From The Brothers Grimm, an account of her family's postwar journey from Budapest to Switzerland and Melbourne.

David Musgrave, the publisher at Puncher & Wattman, said Moving Along: Selected Verse by J. K. Murphy, an 81-year-old Melbourne poet, would be out soon. He thought it appropriate to ask Murray for a comment for the book cover because Murray had published poems by Murphy in Quadrant magazine, where he is literary editor. "If he'd said no, we would have said, 'Fine, thanks,' but he's gone out of his way to offend us," Musgrave said. "He has been very unpleasant and he does seem to court hatred. We refuse to be bullied."

Uh, yeah Mr. Murray. Blurbs are hyperbole, but yours "does carry some clout", right? What kind of excuse is it that others have been pestering him for 40 years so he can write what he wrote to the publishers? Where's the logical consistency in that argument? Mr. Murray needs some mental health assistance if he thinks that makes any sense in light of what he wrote.

It's hardly the case that Mr. Murray was pestered by anybody. He was asked for one blurb. In the time it took to write his alleged "Piss-Off" note, he could have written the blurb; but no, he wanted to write what he wrote instead. You feel sorry for his wife, regardless of the quality of her manuscript.
Pretty laughable that a man would part with his good reputation so easily.