Jordan Peterson book blurb accused of a ‘gross misrepresentation’ of reviews

A British literary critic says a quote used for the blurb of a new edition of psychologist Jordan Peterson’s book Beyond Order, is a “gross misrepresentation” of her review.

Posting to X (formerly Twitter), UK paper The Sunday Times’ literary editor Johanna Thomas-Corr said, “I don’t have it in me to write some causally witty thing about how horrifying this is”.

“The quote on the back of Jordan Peterson’s paperback is a gross misrepresentation of my 2,000+ word New Statesman review of his book. It should be removed.”

According to The Independant, the quote says: “Genuinely enlightening and often poignant… Here is a father figure who takes his audience seriously. And here is a grander narrative about truth, being, order and chaos that stretches back to the dawn of human consciousness.”

It failed note that her review also calls the book, a “lumpy soup” of cliches that “reads more like a compendium of stodgy Sunday sermons delivered by a fire-and-brimstone preacher than a conventional self-help manual or political polemic”.

In a follow-up tweet, Thomas Corr linked to her review. “The truth matters, especially with so much misinformation. I’m disappointed a publisher would allow this.”

According to the BBC, other critics quoted on the book cover also came forward to critique the use of their critiques.

In a since deleted tweet, Times columnist James Marriott described the way his quote had been trimmed as “amusing”, saying the resulting quote “did a lot of heavy lifting”.

The blurb used the words: ”A philosophy of the meaning of life”, but failed to note he also called that philosophy “bonkers”.

Telegraph reviewer Suzanne Moore posted an full version of her review to X, which was also quoted for Peterson’s book without attribution to her.

“Here is my review of Beyond Order by Jordan Peterson which they have snatched half a sentence from and missed out the word hokey,” she wrote. “Dumb blurbing by dumb publisher”

GQ book critic Barry Price waded into the debate with a dissenting view, saying he’d seen quotes trimmed from his reviews used that way in the past, and had to accept it.

“Naturally, I wouldn’t be calling out the publisher for this because, well, I did actually write those words,” he wrote. “Marriott and Thomas-Corr felt the need… to throw Peterson the occasional bone. It should have been obvious that these bones were going to be used for the Frankenstein’s monster of blurb quotes on the book.”

The publisher, Penguin, had not responded to requests by the BBC or The Independent for comment.