Rotten Reviews and Rejections

Happy Sunday, everyone! I hope you’re all having a great weekend so far. As usual, I’m spending mine working. (I’m still trying to find work/life balance as a freelancer.) However, I have also been spending it reading a book I got a couple weeks ago called Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews & Rejections, edited by Bill Henderson and Andre Bernard. I’ve been getting such a kick out of it that I had to share it with all of you, yet I don’t want to do one of my typical book reviews. Instead, I want to go through a couple of these “rotten” reviews and rejections which I think that struggling writers would get a kick out of and find encouragement in.

First, I’ll explain what Rotten Reviews & Rejections is about. As the title suggests, it’s a collection of some of the harsher rejections and reviews of popular works–some of the “reviews” are of the writers themselves! This book takes reviews and rejections from as far back as 411 B.C.E. (seriously) to its publication in 1998. There also notes on famous writers’ rejections and struggles, commentary on the art of reviewing, and writers’ remarks on negative reviews and rejections.

Now that you know roughly what the book contains, I want to dive into the first rotten review/rejection. I’ll start with what I consider to be the most absurd:

…a copyeditor’s despair, a propounder of endless riddles.

Atlantic Monthly on Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (1962)

I want you to take a careful look at the subject of the Atlantic Monthly‘s critique, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language. I have never paid attention to reviews of dictionaries before unless I had an odd experience with that dictionary. Even then, the negative reviews have more pertained to incorrect spelling or definitions, missing words, etc. To find such a negative review of a dictionary which does not have to do with egregious errors took me by complete surprise. The lesson? All books get negative reviews, even ones as commonplace as dictionaries.

The next review really does not pull any punches:

…unmanly, sickening, vicious (though not exactly what is called ‘improper’), and tedious.

Athenaeum on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Well, at least they called it “not exactly what is called ‘improper'”. That’s something, right? It’s not the most negative or vicious review I have seen, but it’s not exactly rosy, either. The Picture of Dorian Gray is counted among Oscar Wilde’s best works. This clash between the review and the novel’s future success proves that no matter how bad a review seems when you read it, it won’t necessarily dictate the fate of your work. There are many, many other readers out there, and if they like your writing, they’ll make sure that you succeed. (Fun fact: the editor of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, in which The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published, feared so much that the story was indecent that he deleted roughly five hundred words from it before publication without Oscar Wilde’s knowledge. British book reviewers still took offense with the novel.)

Of course, before we get to the rotten reviews, we have to get through the rotten rejections. I’ve shown you some rotten rejections of famous works before, but those are only the tip of the iceberg. Fortunately, rejections nowadays are usually just generic form letters, so the personal insults are limited. Just be glad that you haven’t received a rejection like this one:

You’re welcome to le Carre–he hasn’t got any future.

Rejection for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre

Ouch. I have to admit, I’m not sure if this would make me want to crawl into a hole and never come out or prove the publisher/editor wrong. As you might have guessed, le Carre seems to have gone with the latter. It doesn’t seem likely that rejections will get so personal as to be this painful in the modern age, but the next time that you feel the sting of a rejection form letter, remember that le Carre didn’t these harsh words get in his way, so you shouldn’t let one or even one hundred rejection letters get in your way, either.

I get a little too much of a giggle from the last rotten rejection/review I’ll be discussing in this post, although it might have to do more with the novel than the actual rejection:

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 reputation which is seems to enjoy.

Rejection of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

I am not a big fan of Moby-Dick. It’s ironic since my own published essay was written on a chapter of Moby-Dick, but the novel just never caught my interest or kept me engaged. Perhaps it was the excessive talk of whaling. (While this wasn’t the reason why I originally disliked the book, I now cringe at the mention of the title because I had ancestors on the Essex, which served as inspiration for Moby-Dick. If you don’t know why that makes me cringe, check out the Wikipedia article.)

Regardless of my own opinions of the novel, it is still considered a classic and a Great American Novel. Its origins, however, include a rather rotten rejection and mixed reception when it finally was published. How novels become “classics” is a great mystery to most. That’s why you can’t just let a rejection–or a thousand–tear you down. Revisit your work, improve it however you can, and try again. Eventually, you’ll find that editor, publisher, or agent who has just been waiting for work like yours. Who knows, your multi-rejection novel or poetry collection might just become a modern classic.

The best way to handle rejections and negative reviews is to take them in, digest them, and determine if you can use the feedback to improve upon that or future works. However, sometimes you will come across rejections and reviews which are just spiteful and unproductive–in one word, rotten. You need to remember that every writer gets them at some point in their career. All you can do is take a deep breath, put the rejection or review aside, and move on with your life. Don’t feed the trolls; feed your writing.

You can get a paperback copy of Rotten Reviews & Rejections on Amazon. I will also be discussing more of these reviews and rejections in future posts, so keep an eye out!

Have you ever received a particularly painful rejection or review? Know of one for a famous writer/work? Leave your stories in the comments below!