Licking Our Wounds
The Wave-inatrix has lately been enjoying a fun book, published way back in the 90's (remember those?) called Rotten Reviews and Rejections; a collection of - well - reviews and rejections from what are now famous and in some cases revered pieces of writing. The book is fun for anyone who is a writer and who knows the sting of rejection because it is a beacon of hope.
If one can say this about The Great Gatsby: A little slack, a little soft, more than a little artificial, The Great Gatsby falls into the class of negligible novels - then I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing that tastes are subjective and rejections doubly so.
Or how about this about Lolita: I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.
But here's an editor who had a tremendous sense of humor. If you've ever read Gertrude Stein, this rejection is doubly funny, as it is clever mimicry, if you haven't well, it's still pretty fun:
I am only one, only one, only. Only one being, one at the same time. Not two, not three, only one. Only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour. Only one pair of eyes. Only one brain. Only one being. Being only one, having only one pair of eyes, having only one time, having only one life, I cannot read your [manuscript] three or four times. Not even one time. Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one.
And this one I love. A rejection of Remembrance of Things Past: My dear fellow, I may be dead from the neck up, but rack my brains as I may I can't see why a chap should need thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep.
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3 comments:
Rejections are better than silence. I've gotten two in three months of trying.
I may get another next week.
Proust (and the title these days is translated from the French as In Search of Lost Time) had an even better refusal: absolute silence. He sent off the first volume of what became a 7-volume masterwork to André Gide, then editorial director at Gallimard, one of the premier Paris publishers. Proust had his faithful housekeeper and amanuensis Céleste Albaret pack it up and bring it by hand to Monsieur Gide's office. A few weeks later the package came back.
"But monsieur," Céleste said, "I tied this myself, and it's plain to see this knot has not even been undone." Gide had rejected it without reading it, claiming to his colleagues that Proust was nothing but a social butterfly and had nothing to say.
When a few years later Proust won the prestigious Goncourt Prize, Gide came back, hat in hand, and profusely apologized. Gallimard then went on to become Proust's publisher, and the rest is history. The social butterly with nothing to say had written perhaps the greatest novel of the 20th century.
Hope I'm not violating my own rule on drawing attention to words out of context.
The following are comments, exactly as written, from six reviews of my script.
They say never, never be boring.
I may be kidding myself, but I think I succeeded in not being boring.
- PAGE 1 – I’M GOING TO ASSUME THAT ENGLISH ISN’T YOUR FIRST LANGUAGE BECAUSE YOU REALLY
BUTCHER THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
- This is a reasonably fast moving screenplay with an acceptable conclusion
- I love the voice you use to write your script. It honestly reminds me of Hemingway:
not a single word out of place.
- The format of the script is non-standard, the most unusual element is the use of
motivational assignation to the characters rather than a clear cut description of the action.
- If I were to produce for you notes on how many mechanical problems are in this script,
I could write a solid 12-15 pages easily.
- Okay. So I’ve just finished reading the story, and I’m left with the sense that nothing actually HAPPENED
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