Three Interesting Letters Of Rejection

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

I wrote a post last week about now famous and successful authors who had been the victims of intellectually challenged publishers and who as a consequence had suffered the indignity of receiving letters and comments rejecting their work. (Possibly The Most Rejected Book Manuscript In The World) 

Back on the theme of rejection letters I found a few other examples that I thought were interesting and, I hope, amusing. Here are three of the best.

Enjoy.

The first was sent to an aspiring author of a novel. It was either a very bad manuscript or the publisher was having a particularly bad day.  

Dear Bad Writer,

Unfortunately it falls to me to inform you that Harlequin will not be publishing your novel, Kisses In January.

While it is customary to send out a form letter in cases of such rejection, your novel was so strikingly inept, I felt I had to say a few words.

One, you are not welcome to submit any future work to our offices.

Two, both myself and my assistant are considering legal action against you for wasting our valuable time with your relentless tripe.

Among the areas needing vast improvement: Description, character development, and dialogue. The less said about the love scenes the better.

Should this novel have been published, it would have likely resulted in the end of modern book sales.

Trying to Forget,

Judith P Esterman, Editor

Harlequin American Romance.

-----

The second is a curious letter of rejection. In fact you could say it is a rejecting rejection letter.

Herbert A. Millington
Chair – Search Committee
412A Clarkson Hall, Whitson University
College Hill, MA 34109

Dear Professor Millington,

Thank you for your letter of March 16. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an assistant professor position in your department.

This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of candidates, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Despite Whitson’s outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at this time. Therefore, I will assume the position of assistant professor in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.

Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.

Sincerely,
Chris L. Jensen

-----

And the third is perhaps the letter we have all secretly wanted to write at some time in our lives. It is a farewell letter from someone who worked in the Dublin office of Ernst & Young. Now this is closure!

My leaving letter:

Dear Co-Workers,

As many of you probably know, tomorrow is my last day. But before I leave, I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know what a great and distinct pleasure it has been to type "Tomorrow is my last day."

For nearly as long as I've worked here, I've hoped that I might one day leave this company. And now that this dream has become a reality, please know that I could not have reached this goal without your unending lack of support. Words cannot express my gratitude for the words of gratitude you did not express.

I would especially like to thank all of my managers: in an age where miscommunication is all too common, you consistently impressed and inspired me with the sheer magnitude of your misinformation. It takes a strong man to admit his mistake - it takes a stronger man to attribute his mistake to me.

Over the year and a half, you have taught me more than I could ever ask for and, in most cases, ever did ask for. I have been fortunate enough to work with some absolutely interchangeable supervisors on a wide variety of seemingly identical projects - an invaluable lesson in overcoming daily tedium in overcoming daily tedium in overcoming daily tedium.

Your demands were high and your patience short, but I take great solace knowing that my work was, as stated on my annual review, "mostly satisfactory." That is the type of praise that sends a man home happy after even a ‘10 hour’ day, smiling his way through half a bottle of mostly satisfactory scotch.

And to most of my peers: even though we barely acknowledged each other within these office walls, I hope that in the future, should we pass on the street, you will regard me the same way as I regard you: sans eye contact.

But to those few souls with whom I've actually interacted, here are my personalized notes of farewell:

To Caulfield: I will always remember sharing lunch with you, despite having clearly labeled it with my name.

To Mairead: I will miss detecting your flatulence as much as you will clearly miss walking past my cubicle to deliver it.

To Linda: Best wishes on your ongoing campaign to popularize these "email forwards." I sincerely hope you receive that weekend full of good luck, that hug from an old friend, and that baby for your dusty womb.

And finally, to Kat: you were right - I tested positive. We'll talk later.

So, in parting, if I could pass on any word of advice to the individual who will soon be filling my position, it would be to cherish this experience like a sponge and soak it up like a good woman, because a job opportunity like this comes along only once in a lifetime.

Meaning: if I had to work here again in this lifetime, I would sooner kill myself.

Very truly yours,

Cian Kelliher

PS: I will be throwing myself a happy hour farewell party at the Oden 5.30 tomorrow evening if anybody is interested in drinks!

=================

Possibly The Most Rejected Book Manuscript In The World

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Gilbert Young was as aspiring writer, something that will find sympathy with many bloggers and blog readers I’m sure.

But Mr Young has not been the most successful of authors. In the 1970s he wrote a book, World Government Crusade, and last reports indicate that it was rejected by more publishers that any other manuscript. He even wrote to the Soviet Ambassador to see if Russian publishers might be interested. They were not.

He amassed a collection of 205 rejection slips.

It’s all hardly surprising since the subject matter of his book outlined the policies of the ‘World Government and Old Age Pensioners’ Party’ that he had founded in 1958.

But whilst Mr Young’s manuscript may well have been worthy of rejection, sometimes publishers have made serious errors when assessing work submitted to them by aspiring authors. Stupidity is indeed everywhere!

Take a look at these famous examples and the publisher’s comments. It’s a fairly long list, but interesting to see the variety of great writers who started off their careers being rejected. Many of them will surprise you!  

Thank goodness they were persistent enough to carry on. Another good lesson there for aspiring writers today.

Perhaps rather fittingly, whilst the authors and books they criticized have gone on to become household names, the publishers doing the rejecting have long been forgotten.

Enjoy.

“Lady Chatterley's Lover” by D H Lawrence

'for your own sake do not publish this book.'

--------------------------

“The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame

'an irresponsible holiday story'

--------------------------

“Lord of the Flies” by William Golding

'an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.'

--------------------------

“Watership Down” by Richard Adams

'older children wouldn't like it because its language was too difficult.'

--------------------------

"Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann 

Susann's “Valley Of The Dolls” received this response, "...she is a painfully dull, inept, clumsy, undisciplined, rambling and thoroughly amateurish writer whose every sentence, paragraph and scene cries for the hand of a pro. She wastes endless pages on utter trivia, writes wide-eyed romantic scenes ...hauls out every terrible show biz cliché in all the books, lets every good scene fall apart in endless talk and allows her book to ramble aimlessly ..."

---------------------------

“Crash” by J  G Ballard

‘The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help.'

---------------------------

"The Torrents of Spring" by Ernest Hemingway

Regarding his novel, "The Torrents of Spring", Ernest Hemingway was rejected with, "It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it."

----------------------------

"Moby Dick" by Herman Melville

Melville was told, "We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in (England). It is very long, rather old-fashioned..."

-----------------------------

William Faulkner

Faulkner may be a classic writer to this, as well as prior, generation, but back when he was trying to crack the publishing market, he had to read letters like this one, "If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don't think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don't have any story to tell." This was kinder than the rejection he would receive just two years later, "Good God, I can't publish this!"

------------------------------

“The Deer Park” by Norman Mailer

'This will set publishing back 25 years.'

-------------------------------

“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” by Anita Loos

'Do you realize, young woman, that you're the first American writer ever to poke fun at sex.'

--------------------------------

“The Diary of Anne Frank”

‘The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the “curiosity” level.’ 

-----------------------------

“Lust for Life” by Irving Stone

Stone’s manuscript “Lust For Life” was rejected 16 times, with letters like this, "A long, dull novel about an artist." Eventually he found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.

--------------------------

“Barchester Towers” by Anthony Trollope

'The grand defect of the work, I think, as a work of art is the low-mindedness and vulgarity of the chief actors.  There is hardly a lady" or "gentleman" amongst them.'

---------------------------

“Carrie” by Stephen King

'We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias.  They do not sell.'

-----------------------------

“Catch – 22” by Joseph Heller

‘I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.’

-----------------------------

“The Spy who Came in from the Cold” by John le Carré

‘You’re welcome to le Carré – he hasn’t got any future.’

----------------------

“The War Of The Worlds”  &  “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells

Wells had to endure the indignity of a rejection when he submitted his manuscript, "The War of the Worlds" that said, "An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would "take"...I think the verdict would be 'Oh don't read that horrid book'."

And when he tried to market "The Time Machine," it was said, "It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader."

----------------------

“Animal Farm” by George Orwell

‘It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA’

-----------------------

Edgar Allen Poe

Poe was told, "Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume."

-----------------------

 “A Wrinkle In Time” by Madeleine L’Engle

L’Engle's “A Wrinkle In Time” was turned down 29 times.

-------------------------

"Bridge Over River Kwai" by Pierre Boulle 

A rejection letter said, "A very bad book."

--------------------------

"The Clan of Cave Bear" by Jean Auel

Auel was told, "We are very impressed with the depth and scope of your research and the quality of your prose. Nevertheless ... we don't think we could distribute enough copies to satisfy you or ourselves."

--------------------------

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull” by Richard Bach

The publisher of a magazine refusing an offer to bid on the paperback rights to Bach's best selling novel said, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull will never make it as a paperback." Avon Books eventually bought those rights and sales totaled more than 7.25 million copies.

--------------------------

"The Fountainhead" & "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand

Before Ayn Rand became known as an intellectual and her books as classics, she too received rejections. Of “The Fountin Head” they said, "It is badly written and the hero is unsympathetic," and, "I wish there were an audience for a book of this kind. But there isn't. It won't sell."

Of “Atlas Shrugged” doing the rounds some fourteen years later, "... the book is much too long. There are too many long speeches... I regret to say that the book is unsaleable and unpublishable."

-----------------------------

“Lady Windermere’s Fan” by Oscar Wilde

‘My dear sir, I have read your manuscript.  Oh, my dear sir.’

-----------------------------

Jorge Luis Borges

'utterly untranslatable'

-------------------------------

Isaac Bashevis Singer

'It's Poland and the rich Jews again.'

-------------------------------

Anais Nin

'There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic.'

------------------------------

Dr Seuss

"too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling."

----------------------------------

Beatrix Potter

“The Tale Of Peter Rabbit” was turned down so many times, Potter initially self-published it.

------------------------------------

Rudyard Kipling

Kipling received this from the editor of the San Francisco Examiner, "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language."

---------------------------

"Journey Back to Love" by Mary Higgins Clark

Although mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark more recently has received a $60 plus million dollar advance on her next five books, in the early 1960s when she was sending out her manuscript of "Journey Back to Love" the publishers were not so generous, saying things like, "We found the heroine as boring as her husband did."

--------------------------

Colette

Classic writer Colette was told in a letter of rejection, "I wouldn't be able to sell 10 copies."

---------------------------

Emily Dickinson

Only seven of Emily Dickinson's poems were ever published during her lifetime. A rejection early in her career said, "(Your poems) are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities."

----------------------------

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

‘... overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy.  It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.’

The Basic Tenants Of Society

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

No, I didn’t misspell the word in the title, this blog post is about tenants not tenets.

They say about politicians that they are always there when they need you. Tenants are a bit the same.

I have been a landlord for a number of years and I have had a variety of tenants from the perfect, who if they have minor problems take care of them themselves, to the nightmare variety who whinge about everything even the most trivial of matters and things that are clearly their own fault.

Similarly my experience with rental agencies has been both good and bad. 

But that’s life, sometimes the wind’s behind you, sometimes there’s a gale blowing in your face.

But whatever else tenants do, they sometimes amuse, not least when they are writing to you to do something about a problem they are having with the house or apartment.

Here are a few excerpts of funny letters to landlords to illustrate what I mean.

Enjoy.

• “The toilet is blocked and we cannot bathe the children until it is cleared.”

• “I want some repairs done to my stove as it has backfires and burnt my knob off.”

• “This is to let you know that there is a smell coming from the man next door.”

• “The toilet seat is cracked: where do I stand?”

• “I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is running away from the wall.”

• “I request your permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.”

• “Our lavatory seat is broken in half and is now in three pieces.”

• “Will you please send someone to mend our cracked sidewalk? Yesterday my wife tripped on it and is now pregnant.”

• “Our kitchen floor is very damp, we have two children and would like a third, so will you please send someone to do something about it.”

• “Could you please send someone to fix our bath tap? My wife got her toe stuck in it and it is very uncomfortable for us.”

• “50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster and 50% are plain filthy”

• “Will you please send a man to look at my water. It is a funny color and not fit to drink.”

• “It’s the dogs mess that I find hard to swallow”

• “I wish to complain that my father hurt his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage.”

• “The lavatory is blocked, this is caused by the boys next door throwing their balls on the roof.”

• “I am still having trouble with smoke in my built in drawers.”

• “The person next door has a large erection in his back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous.”

• “Would you please send a man to repair my downspout. I am an old age pensioner and need it straight away.”

• “I awoke this morning and found my water boiling.”

• “I want to complain about the farmer across the road. Every morning at 5:30 his cock wakes me up, and it is getting too much.”

• “When the workmen were here they put their tools in my wife's new drawers and made a mess. Please send men with clean tools to finish the job and keep my wife happy.”

• Lady tenant complaining about DIY repairs next door:  "He has got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can't take it any more."
  
  
  

• Problems with the garden foilage:  "My bush is really overgrown round the front and my back passage has fungus growing in it"
  
  
  
• Noisy neighbours:  "... and their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence."
  
  
  

• "I am a single woman living in a downstairs apartment and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night."
  
  
  

• Repairs needed:  “Send a man round with a big tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife.”
  
  
  

• "I have had the clerk of works down on the floor six times but I still have no satisfaction."

• "I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other night that blew them away."
  
  
  
• "This is to let you know that our toilet seat is broken and we can't get Channel 2 television programs."

It Always Surprises Me How One Thing Leads To Another!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

I have no idea why that should be, I mean why it always surprises me how one thing leads to another. After all where else can one thing go? It’s the logical sequence, it has to happen that way. I think what I really mean is, the surprise is what you are led to. It is hardly ever the thing you were expecting.

Every one of us knows from hours of experience how difficult it is to switch on the computer or log on to the internet on a smart phone or other device and be self-disciplined enough to just search for the thing we initially wanted to look for. Countless times in my experience I have gone on to the internet with the sole purpose of maybe checking some stats or looking up some information relating to a business problem, or a health issue perhaps, only to find an hour or so later that I’m on a completely different tack, forgotten completely about why I started, and now absorbed in some other information that has nothing to do with the job at hand.

Entertaining it certainly is. Enjoyable too, without a doubt. Informative, yes it can be (although you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet – unless it appears in this blog of course). And a waste of time? That one is debatable. I think not. Nothing is a waste of time if it is providing any or all of the above attributes – entertainment, enjoyment or information.

One of my favorite sayings is, “It’s a sad day you don’t learn something,” and I am glad to report that in that regard I do not have any sad days. Every day I learn something, usually not what I expected and sometimes the lessons can be very harsh, but it all counts towards bettering oneself and providing valuable experience for the future.

So when I looked at my blog today I had a very different subject in my head to write about. Then I read a comment from my blog-friend coastalcrone on yesterdays blog post “Today Is A Beautiful Day”, part of which sparked off what you are now reading.

Coastalcrone said, “For me words are so visual… they have to look right for me too.”

Now one can analyze any writing from a grammatical viewpoint, or the construction of sentences and paragraphs, or the balance and rhythm of the words, or on its aesthetic content, or on many other different levels. That’s what they do when they study literature at universities, tearing apart and analyzing writing and writers. Sometimes I think that is valuable and informative; at other times I think that they don’t have a clue what they are talking about and have read far, far more into a piece than the writer originally intended. (Most writers, though, are happy to go along with such academic pronouncements because it makes them appear a bit more clever that they would be if they denied them.)

However, all that academic stuff aside, the part of coastalcrone’s comment that promoted all this was really the first part, “… words are so visual”.

Words are visual. Indeed they are. A good description of a person, or a scene, or an incident, conjures up the image in the reader’s mind, and so it should. The better the writing and the writer, the better the visuals the reader experiences.

But, and it’s a big bold BUT, the visual experience is not the writer’s, it always belongs to the reader. The writer is simply the catalyst.

No matter how precise and detailed a description is, if it is a description of something we have not personally witnessed (in other words someone describing a fictitious person or place, or even for example a valley or lake in Australia or India which most of us will never have seen, as opposed to a $10 bill or a laptop computer) a different image will be conjured up in the minds of each individual.

I’m sure you have read a book and then later gone to see the movie. Very seldom if ever does your own visual image agree with the film maker’s. At the moment I can only think of one occasion when my own visual interpretation of a book almost exactly matched the movie interpretation. That was Alastair MacLean’s “Where Eagles Dare”, an excellent World War II espionage thriller and an equally excellent movie. That was probably because MacLean wrote the book and movie screenplay more or less at the same time. (Btw, I don’t mean that I had Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in my visual picture – that would have been too crazy, even for me!)  

Of course the converse is easier to come to grips with. If you see the movie and then read the book, the movie-maker’s visuals, rather than your own, are already in your head. Sometimes that’s okay, if the movie has been a reasonably close interpretation of the book. If they don’t gel well then the one can easily spoil the enjoyment of the other.

And visual interpretations also hold for the spoken as well as the written word. If one hears something described on the radio, for example, it can produce visual images in one’s mind. Not only that, however, but one often gets an imaginary picture of what the person speaking looks like. It can sometimes come as a bit of shock when you see the person on tv or in real life. I’ve heard people remarking on more than one occasion that so-and-so “isn’t like his voice”.

Even when you meet people, you can also have preconceived ideas about them in the few seconds between seeing them and hearing them speak. Some say that that is conclusive proof that light travels faster than sound, i.e. that most people seem bright until you hear them speak.

Of course one should be mature enough to accept people as they are. What one should definitely not do is laugh at some unfortunate with a voice that doesn’t fit them. Admittedly it can be funny, as this talk show host found out when carrying out a tv interview some years ago.

Let’s have a little experiment and see how good you are. You know you shouldn’t laugh but I rather think you might. I did! Quite a lot L But at the host, naturally! :) 

Enjoy!