Ernest Hemingway, regarding his novel, "The Torrents of Spring" was rejected with:
-"It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it."
Carrie by Stephen King
-'We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.'
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.’
Mr. Golding's Lord of the Flies was rejected by 20 publishers.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (later Sorceror’s) Stone was rejected by a dozen publishers, including biggies like Penguin and HarperCollins. Bloomsbury, a small London publisher, only took it on at the behest of the CEO’s eight-year old daughter, who begged her father to print the book.-an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.
Now for a little Writer's Revenge:
Hunter S. Thompson in response to a biography written about him:
— McKeen, you shit-eating freak. I warned you not to write that vicious trash about me —
Now you better get fitted for a black eyepatch in case one of yours gets gouged out by a bushy-haired stranger in a dimly-lit parking lot. How fast can you learn Braille?
You are scum.
HST
****
I realize it's petty, but I fantasize regularly about writing Hunter S. Thompson style letters to those who've rejected my writing. Maybe I will write those ranting responses, attach them to the original rejection letters and then publish them all in one book when I'm famous. Yeah ... that would be awesome.
