Rude Rejection: "This will set publishing back 25 years." (The Deer Park by Norman Mailer)
Rude Rejection: "Do you realize, young woman, that you're the first American writer ever to poke fun at sex." (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos)
Rude Rejection: "My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir." (Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde)
Rude Rejection: "We found the heroine as boring as her husband did." (Journey Back to Love by Mary Higgins Clark)
Rude Rejection: "It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it." (The Torrents of Spring by Ernest Hemingway)
1 comment:
One of my favorite comfort stories isn't about rejection at all; it's the sad truth of acceptance. After Shirley Jackson published The Lottery in the New Yorker - the most famous story it ever did publish - her parents sent her this:
"Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Yorker. It does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don't you write something to cheer people up?"
Even success is full of rejection. I guess we all better just enjoy everything, always, or something ridiculous like that.
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