On the Road…to Rejection (Part 1)

Dear Mr Black,

I am afraid your novel is unsuitable for us at the present time and herewith return your manuscript. I do hope you’re not disheartened by this rejection.

Best wishes
Barnaby Trusington Howle Foxforth

Dear Mr Trusington Howle Foxforth,

Thank you for returning my manuscript and your enclosed, nasty, miminy-piminy little note. I am afraid your letter is most unsuitable for me at the present time as I've just spent the entire weekend writing the novel that you have summarily rejected. I can only presume it is company policy to reject all manuscripts not submitted in ten-foot high Braille. And yes I am aware that it is traditionally bad form to respond to any kind of criticism or rejection but in this, as with all else, I am an innovator therefore I may freely address you as...piss midget. Still, there's time for you to change your views and I think you will when we meet and meet will most assuredly will - when I suck out your eyes and use them as stoppers for my ears to muffle the screams you'll make as I head-but you into a fine paste. I do hope you will not be disheartened by your sudden, violent death.

Yours faithfully
Bernard Black

Dylan Moran (as Bernard Black)
The Letter

Rejection is a part of everyone's life, none less so than the authors. As I myself begin on the road, my first novel now completed and the second on the way, I must suck in my gut and set my jaw for the torrent of rejection which is surely to come.

Although we expect them and know they are coming, we none the less get a little disheartened with every one (a little bit like losing the lottery every week, despite our best efforts). But we, I, can take solace (as well as a measure of fear) in the droves of those who have come before me.

A rather interesting article (referenced at the end of this post) recently detailed 30 famous authors who received rejections (often rather rude). Here are my 10 favourites (or most astonishing) from the list with some added statistics for context. I can’t back up the article, but even if none of them are true, they are still fun, if not a little disturbing.

Stephen King has sold an estimated 300-350 Million books, is one of the most popular, prolific and richest authors of recent times. His first book, Carrie, sold 13,000 copies in hardback and over 1 million paperback copies in the first year. He received dozens of rejections, one saying: “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.”

King said of Carrie, “I’m not saying that Carrie is shit and I’m not repudiating it. She made me a star, but it was a young book by a young writer. In retrospect it reminds me of a cookie baked by a first grader – tasty enough, but kind of lumpy and burned on the bottom.”

William Golding’s first novel, Lord of the Flies, sold only 3,000 copies in the US before going out of print. By the time a paperback edition was published in 1959 it was beginning to challenge The Catcher in the Rye as the most popular book on American college campuses and by mid-1962 had sold more than 65,000 copies. Before that however, it was rejected by 20 publishers, with one saying “an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.” Golding won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 and the Booker Prize in 1980.

John le Carré gained fame from The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, named by Publishers Weekly as the “best spy novel of all-time” in 2006 and selling tens of millions of copies in more than twenty languages. After submitting it, one of the publishers sent it along to a colleague, with the message: “You’re welcome to le Carré – he hasn’t got any future.”

Anne Frank and her Diary (Het Achterhuis), published in 1947, has sold 30 million copies worldwide. It is now considered one of the key texts of the twentieth century…or as one publisher put it: “The girl doesn't, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the 'curiosity' level.” 15 other publishers also rejected the novel.

Joseph Heller’s first novel, Catch-22, is also on the list with Anne Frank as one of the top 100 best selling books of all time, selling 10 million copies. Apparently one publisher wrote of it: “I haven’t 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.” Heller did get Simon & Schuster on board though, with a $1500 advance.

Vladimir Nabakov’s Lolita is included in Time Magazine’s 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Although the first 5,000 copies sold out, it didn’t get the critical acclaim it has today until Graham Greene called it one of the best novels of 1955 in an interview in the Times. It was the first book since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication. One publisher said: “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.”

Sylvia Plath, famed for The Bell Jar and winner of both the Glascock Prize and Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was no doubt a talented poet to say the least. One publisher reportedly said: “There certainly isn't enough genuine talent for us to take notice.”

Rudyard Kipling, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907 and noted by George Orwell as a “prophet of British imperialism”, was told: “I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.” These were the words used by one of the editors of the San Francisco Examiner newspaper when rejecting one of Mr. Kipling’s short stories.

Jack Kerouac became the voice of the Beat Generation and his novel, On the Road, has become a staple for all youths to read, even today (probably because of the lonely nature of the main character). When it was released, the New York Times hailed it as “the most beautifully executed the clearest and most important utterance” of Kerouac’s generation. The novel was chose by Time as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. One publisher said, “His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don't think so.”

Marcel Proust is hailed by many as the greatest writer who ever lived. Whether you think that or not, you can’t doubt the guy could write…a lot. In Search of Lost Time (previously known as Remembrance of Things Past) spans some 3,200 pages with more than 2,000 literary characters. Graham Greene called Proust the “greatest novelist of the 20th century” and W. Somerset Maugham called the novel the “greatest fiction to date.” A spoken critique from one publisher was: “My dear fellow, I may be dead from the neck up, but rack my brains as I may I can't see why a chap should need thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep.”

I hope you enjoyed that and, if you are in the same boat, take your own sip from the down to earth cup.

But…there are two sides to every story…which I will save for Part 2.

[You can find the original article at Examiner.com]

The End of the Affidavit (or Our Man in the Dock)

Spring in London, 25th May 1895 and there’s still a whole summer to look forward to; but for the flamboyant Oscar, an important verdict is about to be announced. 87 years later, in 1982, an ageing ex-MI6 spy named Graham puts the finishing touches to his latest work. Nearly Christmas in 2006, and the editor of the The New Republic picks up Michael Crichton’s next book – imaginatively titled, ‘Next’. And in April 2008, The Guardian publishes one of the most important articles on chiropracty ever (have there been any others?).

Simon Singh’s article published in The Guardian on 19th April 2008 as an extension to his recently published book “Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial”, stated, “This organisation [British Chiropractic Organisation] is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments [referencing that the association claims their members can help treat children with problems such as asthma and colic]." The comment resulted in Singh being sued for libel, a case which he has lost (although there is still the appeal).

The comment on the bogusness of chiropractors really isn’t much to make a fuss about. The people who believe in Alternative Medicine (alt-med) believe in it because of faith (leading to the placebo effect), not because of evidence. That’s the whole point about alt-med. If it worked (above and beyond that of a placebo) it would have lost the prefix. However, this debate should be left for Ben Goldacre (please check out his book ‘Bad Science’ and his Blog of the same name, a trillion times better than this one – www.badscience.net). But what about the end result, the following libel case and the loss thereof for Mr Singh?

Problems for author’s with the nuances of the libel laws have existed for some time. In 1895, Lord Alfred Douglas, also known as Bosie (God knows why), was in a relationship with a certain genius male author called Oscar Wilde – then at the height of his career. The Lord’s father, a Marquess no less who was pretty angry about the whole thing, left an obscene message at Oscar’s club accusing him of homosexuality. Oscar sued the Marquess for libel and during the case, Oscar’s penchant for rent boy’s came out, and Oscar was subsequently sentenced to 2 years hard labour.

In 1982, ex-MI6 spy and legendary novelist Graham Greene published a pamphlet entitled, J’Accuse – The Dark Side of Nice, about corruption in the higher echelons of Nice’s civil government. It resulted in a libel case which Greene lost. However, although Greene never got to see it, Jacques Medécin (the ex-mayor of Nice) got his comeuppance. In 1994, he was convicted of several counts of corruption and associated crimes and sentenced to prison.

More recently, in 2006, Michael Crowley wrote an article which criticised Michael Crichton’s book State of Fear. Subsequently, never to rise to provocation, Crichton added a character to his next book (‘Next’), called Mick Crowley – a child molester with a small penis (I kid you not). I can’t find reference to a subsequent libel case but all it really achieved for Crichton was to bring more attention to the original article written by Crowley – and the subsequent article by Crowley where he described the “literary hit-and-run”.

Crichton used a weapon to hide his defamation, one of the few in the writer’s arsenal if he really wishes to make a ludicrous statement obvious to the reader. It was first detailed in The New York Times in 1998 and is known as the ‘small penis rule’. That being that it discourages lawsuits. If you use a character to defame a real life person, and then give that person a small penis, no male is going to come forward and say, “That’s me”!

In all of these cases, the simple fact is that one side is always lying, and it isn’t always the same side. The media are just as guilty at cooking up crap as alt-meds are at cooking up evidence. If we want freedom of speech, we should respect it not abuse it. And if you want privacy, try not to sleep with five prostitutes in black leather outfits where people can photograph you.

Of course, the best position to be in of all is that of the winner – and that doesn’t always involve a lawsuit. As Crowley put it; “let me suppose a corollary to the small penis rule. Call it the small man rule: If someone offers substantive criticism of an author and the author responds by hitting below the belt, as it were, then he’s conceding that the critic has won.”

Well said; small dick.

[Sign up to the petition to keep the libel laws out of science - go to Sense About Science]

Books v. Cigarettes: An Update on the State of the Debate

About two years ago I moved in around the corner from one of George Orwell’s old abodes in Islington. I know because a blue plaque proudly declares this fact. Orwell is responsible for two important things in my literary life. His masterpiece, 1984, was the first proper novel that I read without a teacher or curriculum forcing me to do so. Everyone remembers their first time right? And also, 1984 was the first and only book that while reading I skipped parts of. One part in fact, that bit where Winston is reading from Goldstein’s ‘The Theory and Practise of Oligarchical Collectivism’ to Julia. I’ve always felt a sense of shame about failing to wholly complete it (even though I class it in my read list). Either that or wondered whether there was perhaps something just plain wrong with me. Anyway, little did I know that this writer, one of the greatest in Britain’s canon, was addicted to the two same basic substances as me.

In 1946 Orwell wrote a now well known essay called Books V. Cigarettes about the arguments that people give to their reasoning behind not indulging in literature. That being that it is too expensive. Orwell goes into detail about his own spending habits and concludes that he himself spends “in the neighbourhood of £25 a year” on books. He goes on to compare this to his other pastime, smoking, on which he spends £40 a year. In the end he implores people to “admit that it is because reading is less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed, are too expensive”.

Orwell died in 1950, at the age of 46, from a burst artery in his lung - his six ounces of tobacco a week no doubt contributed to this untimely demise. Orwell never really got to see the legacy that perhaps his finest work, 1984, brought him (it being published only six months before his death). Now, the Books V. Cigarettes essay is well known and pops up everywhere in the rather pretty Penguin Paperback edition. Despite Orwell’s often pious and arseholish approach to social issues, in Books V. Cigarettes he has struck a chord.

But what about now, in the intervening 60 years, things have moved on. We like to think that we are brighter than the post-war poverty stricken soot covered masses; better fed, in better health and certainly more literate. I am addicted to the two same substances as Orwell, the one that made him and the one that destroyed him – Books and Cigarettes respectively.

Is it still true, are Books still the cheaper pastime? With the various economic pressures effecting leisure activities and the arrival of new ones how does the Book favour.

I don’t smoke quite the same amount as Orwell, in fact I smoke around 10 a day which is 3 ½ packs per week. My brand is £5.11 per pack, so over a year I spend £930.

Now for the tricky part, the Books. Orwell goes into detail about his approach to obtaining tomes – bought, borrowed, gifted, stolen etc. Orwell’s final table looked a bit like this:

	£	s.	d.
Bought	36	9	0
Gifts	10	10	0
Review Copies etc	25	11	9
Borrowed and not returned*	4	16	9
On Loan	3	10	0
Shelves	2	0	0
Total	82	17	6

*Although these were not at direct cost to Orwell, he argued that those books which he had borrowed from others evened out the missing integers left by those he’d had stolen from him.

This was only half of Orwell’s collection, so he doubled the price and divided it by fifteen, the number of years which his collection spanned, and arrived at his £25 a year figure.

First of all, and similar to Orwell, I have two sets of books in different locations. However, they each comprise a similar number and grade as to those readily available for me to count. So here goes:

	No.
Hardbacks Bought	12
Paperbacks Bought	128
Hardbacks Bought 2nd Hand	4
Paperbacks Bought 2nd Hand	42
Gifted Hardback	6
Gifted Paperback	38
Stolen Paperback	4
Cheap Classics	24
Total	258

The above numbers account for five years worth of buying. So generally I can calculate the following monetary expenditure based on average prices.

	£	p.
Hardbacks Bought	155	88
Paperbacks Bought	894	72
Hardbacks Bought 2nd Hand	40
Paperbacks Bought 2nd Hand	126
Gifted Hardback	77	94
Gifted Paperback	265	62
Stolen Paperback	27	96
Cheap Classics	60
Total	1648	12

This leaves a total expenditure per year of £235, just shy of ten times that in Orwell’s day – and he had more books. So reading is around about a 4 times cheaper addiction than smoking cigarettes. This compared to Book habit being 60% the cost of smoking in Orwell’s day. The odds have got better for the readers or worst for the smokers; depending on how you look at things.

Orwell also looked at that other great British pastime, drinking. Alcoholism was just as popular in the mid-40’s as it is now. He calculated that a pint of beer a day (at 6d.) cost him £9 2s. 6d. Today, at around £2.10 per pint, you are spending £766.50. So, once again, better for the readers or bad for the boozers.

My cinema ticket today cost £9.70 (then of course there’s the addition of ice cream, but I won’t go into that). The movie was 1 hour 40 minutes which translates to £5.82 for an hours worth of entertainment. Orwell calculated 2 shillings an hour for one of the better seats in a cinema and about the same per hour for a book. I calculate, using the same formula as Orwell, the Book entertainment per hour to be (using £6.99 as the average price for a book) £1.75.

DVD’s are even worse (at around £5 and hour for a cheaper DVD), and don’t get me started on BluRay’s, Xbox’s, Playstation’s etc. etc. PC Games, although perhaps the realm of the weak and nerdy (like me), fair slightly better. It takes perhaps 36 hours to complete Max Payne 2. I bought this game new for £20, so works out at 55p per hour. However, when you start taking into account the cost of the PC, the Operating System to run it and the constant battling with machinery and software – perhaps 55p is conservative and more hassle than it’s worth. Holiday’s are far more expensive, although often work in favour of the readers – especially those like me who tend to pack more books than clothes.

Orwell concluded that reading was the least expensive of the lot and if anything things seemed to have gotten better for the readers in the 60 years or so which have past. Of course, less people smoke now than they did then, but do more people buy books. Is this drop in relative price of reading because demand is so high and supply has met it so easily?

Orwell calculated that on average people bought 3 books per year. Last year, the UK trade market for books was worth £2.3 Billion. If you divide that by the 61 million population (which is bad statistics I know, don’t write in), that’s around £40 per head. Which is what, just shy of six books per annum. This is good, but what are they buying?

With the advent of celebrity has come the Celebrity Biography, and how much of that money was spent on single book ‘crazes’, like Twilight. What about the general state of fiction today compared to Orwell’s. Perhaps we read more now, but I conclude that what we are reading might not be what Orwell expected (or wanted).

I have another conclusion though, which is even more important, that my rather appalling analysis gives me. If I were to give up smoking, I could purchase another 310 second hand books a year, or 133 new ones. And, with the extra years I get by not dying while my hair still retains colour, I might actually get a chance to read them.