Novelist Rhian Ellis (After Life: A Novel [Penguin, 2001]) over at the delightful blog Ward Six posted the above fabulous rejection from Gordy Lish. Hop on over to the Ward and read a little more about it. Ellis' post is entitled Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish (and Me). I like the homespun feel and earnest wordiness of Lish's rejection. Feels like he doesn't ever want you to give up on him or Quarterly, which you've just got to love. "This magazine is wide open -- to everyone and everything. It only remains for you to teach us who's who and what's what." Also: "A fact or three." Something warmly genuine about this one. A good old blast from the past.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Classically DeLISHious
Novelist Rhian Ellis (After Life: A Novel [Penguin, 2001]) over at the delightful blog Ward Six posted the above fabulous rejection from Gordy Lish. Hop on over to the Ward and read a little more about it. Ellis' post is entitled Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish (and Me). I like the homespun feel and earnest wordiness of Lish's rejection. Feels like he doesn't ever want you to give up on him or Quarterly, which you've just got to love. "This magazine is wide open -- to everyone and everything. It only remains for you to teach us who's who and what's what." Also: "A fact or three." Something warmly genuine about this one. A good old blast from the past.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
This brings me back to youth like just about nothing in the world can do. I have this very rejection, up in the front of my first rejection folder, from the eager hopeful college days. I can never forget that opening -- "Yes, it is no on this, yes" -- and the feeling I got from getting Scrawls from Lish. Then the Quarterly folded, I focused on making money, and now back into the literary scene with a decade's worth of polished manuscripts, I realize that yes, my important work is still unpublished, and like the work that will eventually be left behind me, I have been growing old.
"Yes, it is no on this, yes--"
"Don't do what Donny Don't does."
This one is acceptable.
Post a Comment