Pushcart's Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections: A History of Insult, a Solace to Writers

this is a great collection of bad reviews and rejection letters of great books and authors. it gives the unpublished writer hope, knowing that authors like dickens and joyce were rejected by publishers. and it's loaded with humor.

If the greatest authors of all can be rejected and survive, maybe there's hope for all unpublished authors. The publishing racket has only become harder and harder to break into these days, unless one is willing to go the route of electronic publishing and on-demand printing, both of which remain dangerously akin to vanity press printings as of this review. This wonderful little collection serves as a comic tonic to the rejection and review blues; although some of the authors are obscure today (which is my reason for not giving it full marks --it's hard to laugh when you have no idea what book is being rejected), overall it's a marvelous little read. Some examples of rotten rejections: Tony Hillerman was told to "get rid of all that Indian stuff"; J.G. Ballard was told "the author of this book is beyond psychiatric help"; William Faulkner was told about his novel "Sanctuary" "Good God, I can't publish this. We'd both be in jail."; and my favorite, "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language." When one considers that J.K Rowling had the first Harry Potter book rejected ten times before it was published, one has to wonder what publishers are thinking. Now you can see for yourself how badly they perceive literary quality, most of the time.

T.S. Eliot's work: flapdoodle? Ralph Waldo Emerson: a toothless baboon? Dylan Thomas: a pernicious figure? Bernard Malamud: superficial and unconvincing? Viriginia Woolf: dull? Yes, according to the critics and publishers quoted in this wonderfully comforting book. Isn't it nice that history -- and readers -- proved them all wrong?

This is clearly an update of "Rotten Rejections, The Letters That Publishers Wish They'd Never Sent", and it looks like much better value than the original, which was only 101 pages and cost me NZ$19.95. The original was both entertaining and a great tool to help keep a frustrated writer going in the face of nothing but rejections. A must-have for you if you fall into this category.