NEWS: On the Absurdity of Rejection

CULTURE: On the Absurdity of Rejection

How do you follow up an article announcing the death of a legend? (Not to mention a personal hero?) It definitely derails one's train of thought and calls into question the triviality of one's ideas, that's for sure.

Ms. L'Engle's Time Quintet series is nothing short of a masterpiece, its brilliance permeating dimensions, from the vastness of space to the smallest of organelles. To consider that it was ever rejected by a publishing house now seems perfectly absurd -- and yet, its first volume (A Wrinkle in Time) saw years of trying and near-failure, rejected by no less than forty publishers before finding a home with Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

So on a related note, here's a short and interesting weekend read that's simultaneously funny and utterly depressing: yesterday The NY Times published an essay examining some of the more egregious rejection blunders of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., one of the more respectable and influential publishing houses of our time. In it, author David Oshinsky cracks open the Knopf records vault at the University of Texas at Austin and starts digging for gems. It might seem like the publishers behind seventeen Nobel Prize-winners might be above rejecting George Orwell on the basis of Americans being not that into "animal stories," but hey -- everyone is equally prone to making the kind of mistakes that make you want to bang your head on your desk repeatedly. Some just make you bang your head on your desk more than others.

The Kerouac one in particular pains me. Oshinsky goes on to examine Knopf's taste for rejecting novels and research of a historical nature, often for lack of wanting to take a chance on possibly not being able to recoup publication costs. Historical classic The Age of the Democratic Revolution was one; The Diary of Anne Frank, another. Oops.

He also touches on the declining art of the rejection letter -- in his prime, Knopf was apt to use some exciting words the likes of which our culture has pretty much eschewed these days in our veer toward the overly polite.

Awesome.

Having been on both sides, the whole publishing process is a decidedly tough thing. On the one hand, rejections can be (at least temporarily) crippling to even the thicker-skinned sort; on the other hand, who knows what poor intern was slogging through several books a week, perhaps skimming out based on bad grammar or a somewhat-lacking sense of personal taste. Overall, it leaves me with a pang of guilt, so I leave you with this: would-be Madeleine L'Engles of the world, if as a lowly reader-report intern I recommended your rejection, I'm truly sorry. I hope you persevere with your manuscripts, and if they truly are great, then I hope they do well. But know this -- no matter what, those reader reports were written with flare. Knopf, wherever you are -- you big, blundering fool of a pioneer, I salute you.



_DictionaryGirl_ was pretty much the best reader-report-writing intern in the publishing world ever. Also, go get The Time Quintet! Forty rejections is nothing. One success is everything.

THAT WAS YOU!

I thought this article was going to be about the Hopefuls group.

Despite being disappointed.... I loved it!

Wonderful work, DG.

I haven't read the Wrinkle in Time stuff in forever. And I'm going to the bookstore today.

You know, I see a ton more SF out there on the shelves at B&N (or wherever) than I did when I was a lot younger, but there's still about the same count of stuff that's actually worth reading.

Then there's gems like "Adolescence of P-1" or James Hogan's stuff which nobody else likes but me. How did that get published?

Finally there's stuff where the guy's CRAP at writing, but 3 or 4 books later he gets a lot better. I'm looking at YOU, Jim Butcher! If I started with the 1st book instead of the 3rd, I would have thrown it against the wall.

This isn't one hundred percent relevant, but I found it when looking at Wikipedia one night. It is regarding an unpublished (and lost) Philip K. Dick novel called Pilgrim on the Hill.

I don't know if the book is any good or not, but it struck me as being really sad that it would seem that the only real surviving information on this story is a publisher's synopsis that is critical of it!

Awesome article!

Looking forward to the list containing all the crap that slipped through and got published when it shouldn't have.

With their apologies.

ah, sigh.

A Wrinkle in Time catapulted me into speculative fiction as a child. Much love for Ms. L'Engle, with a side of affection for DG and her articles.

-TTm

The scene where a row of completely identical boys bounce identical balls in front of identical houses, is so eerie... it really translates ideas of anti conformity into the language of youth.

sidenote- I'm totally with Knopf's assesment of Kerouac. Writing can be groundbreaking, fresh and original and still be boring.

God, how I wish this was my profession...

I agree with Morgan. DG, you do write amazing articles. I'm a professional writer -- not in the sense that my stuff is any good, but that is how I make my living. Now, to all the "would-be Madeleine L'Engles of the world" I want to say one thing: THE PROCESS IS SUBJECTIVE. I once -- by mistake -- sent a book proposal to a publisher who had already turned it down. Second time around, they bought the book, and it did quite well (going through five different editions). A rejection letter means nothing other than you sent the manuscript to the wrong person -- someone with a different artistic vision, someone who wasn't able to appreciate your work. Send it out again. And again. And ... well, you get the idea.

... ah, at last! Clarification for why my memoirs haven't been published... yet...

It's stories like these that give me all my resolve for everything I attempt in life.

Thankyou. That was a well written, informative and somewhat uplifting article. Who'd have thought all those rejectees who believe themselves brilliant and misunderstood might be right? Now those of us with no talent can go back to believing it was the publishing houses who made the mistake!

Hell, if the Beatles can get turned down by a record label on the basis that "guitar groups are on the way out", we all have hope.