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Where Are the Rejections of Yesteryear?
September 10, 2007
Yesterday I finished the New York Times crossword, an event that occurs about as frequently as does balancing my checkbook (twice a year, give or take... ) -- so I missed
this highly entertaining piece in the Book Review by historian David Oshinsky about Alfred A. Knopf's rejection files in the University of Texas archives.
You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, and you evidently cannot publish 17 Nobel-winning and 47 Pulitzer-winning manuscripts without breaking egos:
"The rejection files, which run from the 1940s through the 1970s, include dismissive verdicts on the likes of Jorge Luis Borges (“utterly untranslatable”), Isaac Bashevis Singer (“It’s Poland and the rich Jews again”), Anaïs Nin (“There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic”), Sylvia Plath (“There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice”) and
Jack Kerouac (“His frenetic and scrambling prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so”). In a two-year stretch beginning in 1955, Knopf turned down manuscripts by Jean-Paul Sartre, Mordecai Richler, and the historians A. J. P. Taylor and Barbara Tuchman, not to mention
Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” (too racy) and James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” (“hopelessly bad”)."
However, by the time he finishes, Oshinsky is less concerned with the quality of the manuscripts rejected than he is with the quality of the rejections manumitted by the Knopfs and their editor Harold Strauss:
"In 1958, Alfred Knopf sent this pointed note to T. Harry Williams, a professor of Southern history, who also had published a successful book with the company a few years before: “Dear Harry — I am terribly sorry because I would love to have a really good manuscript from you, but ‘Americans at War’ isn’t it.” "
Having just finished a novel I dearly wish had been rejected by its publisher, I will admit that I am nostalgic for a time in which thicker skins were assumed (not that they necessarily existed; T. Harry Williams, Oshinsky points out, was "not amused" by Knopf's note, sending back his own that read: “Enclosed is a check for $1 which is sufficient for return postage first class. I would appreciate getting the manuscript back immediately.”)
Not, you understand, that I would want to receive one myself -- nor would I really want any other writer to suffer the indignity of hearing "Your manuscript is utterly hopeless as a candidate for our list." No, what I'm really nostalgic for is the "necessary roughness" implied by these letters. Be rigorous about what you reject, editors, but diplomatic in how you reject it -- you never know when the "utterly untranslatable" and "hopelessly bad" might become publishing gold.
Posted by Bethanne Patrick on September 10, 2007 | Comments (5)
