The Company We Keep
As the Thanksgiving holiday looms ahead, I thought, “What better time to re-hash the joy that is the rejection letter!” Hey, you’re a writer, you appreciate the irony. To that end I’ve decided to regale you with more rejection letter excerpts from some of your favorite authors. Remember everyone, if these authors were able to rebound from their hate mail, so can you.
Richard Bach (JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL): “JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL will never make it as a paperback.”
JG BALLARD (CRASH): “The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help.”
Pierre Boulle (THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI): “A very bad book.”
Pearl S. Buck (THE GOOD EARTH): “…regret that the American public is not interested in anything in China.”
John Dos Passos (THE GREAT DAYS): “I am rather offended by what seems to me, quite gratuitous passages dealing with sex acts and natural functions.”
Dr. Seuss (AND TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET): “…too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.” Really, is nothing sacred?
William Faulkner (SANCTUARY): “Good God, I can’t publish this. We’d both be in jail.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (THE GREAT GATSBY): “Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald deserves a good shaking … THE GREAT GATSBY is an absurd story, whether considered as romance, melodrama, or plain record of New York high life.”
Anne Frank (THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK): “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift the book above the curiosity level.”
William Golding (THE LORD OF THE FLIES): “It does not seem that you have been wholly successful at working out what is an admittedly promising idea.”
Joseph Heller (CATCH-22): “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.”
Ernest Hemingway (THE TORRENTS OF SPRING): “It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.”
Mary Higgins Clark (JOURNEY BACK TO LOVE): “We found the heroine as boring as her husband did.”
Rudyard Kipling (untitled submission): “I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.”
Jack London (THE CALL OF LIFE): “forbidding and depressing.”
Norman Mailer (THE DEER PARK): “This will set publishing back 25 years.”
Herman Melville (MOBY DICK): “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 and in our opinion not deserving of the reception which it seems to enjoy.”
George Orwell (ANIMAL FARM): “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.”
Edgar Allen Poe (?): “Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.”
Jacqueline Susann (VALLEY OF THE DOLLS): “…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…”
H.G. Wells (THE WAR OF THE WORLDS): “An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would ‘take’…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’.” (THE TIME MACHINE) “It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.”
William Butler Yeats (various poems): “I am relieved to find the critics shrink from saying that Mr. Yeats will ever be a popular author. I should really at last despair of mankind if he could be… [The book is] absolutely empty and void. The work does not please the ear, nor kindle the imagination, nor hint a thought for one’s reflection.”
Of course, when measured individually, the sting might not be so bad and less difficult to overcome. But when the rejections transcend quality and spill over into quantity, that’s a whole other ball game. This is when the self-doubt sets in and tests an author’s resolve. Those able to rally from this are the true warriors in the industry.
Please take a moment to bow your head for those who have come before us.
Richard Bach (JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL): rejected 18 times
Ray Bradbury (author of over 100 science fiction novels and stories): rejected close to 800 times before selling his first story
John Creasy (author of 564 mystery novels): rejected 774 times before publishing his first book
Patrick Dennis (AUNTIE MAME): rejected 17 times
John Grisham (A TIME TO KILL): rejected 45 times
Frank Herbert (DUNE): rejected 13 times
Stephen King (CARRIE): rejected more than 30 times
Louis L’Amour (author of over 100 western novels): rejected more than 300 times before publishing his first book
Madeleine L’Engle (A WRINKLE IN TIME): rejected 29 times
Margaret Mitchell (GONE WITH THE WIND): rejected 38 times
Beatrix Potter (THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT): rejected unanimously by the publishing community and thus decided to self-publish
JK Rowling (HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE): rejected 14 times
If you’re a true sadist and would like more information on authors who eventually managed to scrabble out of the quicksand littering the road to publishing stardom, you might want to check out the following books:
Michael Larsen’s, LITERARY AGENTS
Joyce Spizer’s, REJECTIONS OF THE WRITTEN FAMOUS
ROTTEN REVIEWS AND REJECTIONS, edited by Bill Henderson & Andre Bernard
