On Rejection
I’ve got a bit of free time between classes, such as it is …
Speaking of Publius, I think he’s a devout follower of Thomas Merton, who once said, “In this era, it is no longer necessary to parody. it’s sufficient to simply quote.”
University of California Press just sent me a Class A Rejection. Since I was a horny bachelor for forty years, and a barely-published writer for even longer, I’ve developed all manner of theory about rejection. A Class A is an actual missive from some living being. A Class B is the rejection slip with a note at the bottom. Class C is, of course, just the rejection note. In any case, I got a Class A for the University Of California Press. I hate when publishers tell me how they find my work, to quote UC, “an appealing submission but…”. The Utne Reader once was interested in republishing my “Ghetto Hawk”. The editor wrote to tell me how it was under consideration until the very last editor’s meeting. I feel like the guy who came in 4th in the Olympics, who lost the race by 1/2934857393023875630283 of a second.
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