Rotton Rejections

The following are stolen (quoted!) from the Rotten Rejections page, which advertises a book by the same name. (Holiday present? I should think so!) That page has more. Go, visit. And see that even the very successful writers receive rejections--and, sometimes, absurd ones. How do we know these are real? Well, we don't. But are they possible? Most certainly.

Jorge Luis Borges
'utterly untranslatable'

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

Jack Kerouac
'His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation.  But is that enough?  I don't think so.'

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence

'for your own sake do not publish this book.'

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

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

On Sylvia Plath
'There certainly isn't enough genuine talent for us to take notice.'

Crash by J  G Ballard
‘The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help.'

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.’

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

Animal Farm by George Orwell
‘It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA’

Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde
‘My dear sir,
I have read your manuscript.  Oh, my dear sir.’

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.’