Slip Slip Rejection SlipThe style of famed experimental writer Gertrude Stein was not universally admired. (Sample passage: "If everybody did not die," she wrote in Wars I Have Seen, "the earth would be all covered over and I, I as I, could not have come to be and try as much as I can try not to be I, nevertheless, I would mind that so much, as much as anything, so then why not die, and yet and again not a thing, not a thing to be liking, not a thing.")
Stein once received a delightfully insulting rejection slip from her editor, A.J. Fifield:
"I am only one, only one, only one. Only one being, one at the same time. Not two, not three, only one. Only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour. Only one pair of eyes. Only one brain. Only one being. Being only one, having only one pair of eyes, having only one time, having only one life, I cannot read your MS three or four times. Not even one time. Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one."
Stein, Gertrude (1874-1946) American experimental writer, companion of Alice B. Toklas [noted for such works as Three Lives(1908), Tender Buttons (1914), and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)]
[Sources: L. Davidson, Wit's Thesaurus]More Gertrude Stein anecdotesRelated Anecdote Keywords:
Literature Insults Publishing Mockery Writing Rejections
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