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I just ran across this and thought you might enjoy it.
No Thanks, Mr. Nabokov
From the New York Times
By DAVID OSHINSKY
Published: September 9, 2007
In the summer of 1950, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. turned down the English-language rights to a Dutch manuscript after receiving a particularly harsh reader’s
report. The work was “very dull,” the reader insisted, “a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.” Sales would
be small because the main characters were neither familiar to Americans nor especially appealing. “Even if the work had come to light five years ago, when
the subject was timely,” the reader wrote, “I don’t see that there would have been a chance for it.”
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Text: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Records, 1873-1996 (From the Harry Ransom Center Web Site)
Knopf wasn’t alone. “The Diary of a Young Girl,” by
Anne Frank,
would be rejected by 15 others before Doubleday published it in 1952. More than 30 million copies are currently in print, making it one of the best-selling
books in history.
The Anne Frank reader’s report is part of the massive
Knopf archive housed in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
at the
University of Texas.
The document is one of thousands tucked away in the publisher’s rejection files, a place where whopping editorial blunders are mercifully entombed. Nothing
embarrasses a publisher more than the public knowledge that a literary classic or a mega best seller has somehow slipped away. One of them turned down
Pearl Buck’s novel “The Good Earth” on the grounds that Americans were “not interested in anything on China.” Another passed on George Orwell’s “Animal
Farm,” explaining it was “impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.” (It’s not only publishers: Tony Hillerman was dumped by an agent who urged him
to “get rid of all that Indian stuff.”)
For almost a century, Knopf has been the gold standard in the book trade, publishing the works of 17
Nobel Prize-
winning authors as well as 47
Pulitzer Prize-
winning volumes of fiction, nonfiction, biography and history. Recently, however, scholars trolling through the Knopf archive have been struck by the number
of reader’s reports that badly missed the mark, especially where new talent was concerned. The rejection files, which run from the 1940s through the 1970s,
include dismissive verdicts on the likes of Jorge Luis Borges (“utterly untranslatable”), Isaac Bashevis Singer (“It’s Poland and the rich Jews again”),
Anaïs Nin (“There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic”), Sylvia Plath (“There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent
for us to take notice”) and
Jack Kerouac
(“His frenetic and scrambling prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so”). In a two-year
stretch beginning in 1955, Knopf turned down manuscripts by Jean-Paul Sartre, Mordecai Richler, and the historians A. J. P. Taylor and Barbara Tuchman,
not to mention
Vladimir Nabokov
’s “Lolita” (too racy) and James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” (“hopelessly bad”).
As a historian, I was most interested in the files of my professional colleagues. I went through them, I must admit, anticipating a pile of windy pronouncements
and delicious mistakes. Reader’s reports can be wildly subjective, reflecting the quirks and biases of the reviewer, and the history rejection files are
hardly immune. In the 1940s and ’50s, Knopf sent a fair number of American history manuscripts to a notorious curmudgeon whose scathing critiques could
peel bark from a tree. In one reader’s report, we see him demolish a well-known historian, calling her research “shockingly inadequate” and her writing
“fairly drab.” In another, he works over a promising scholar, describing the prose as “a bit better than Ph.D. English” and claiming that “the mountain
of his research has produced a mouse of a thesis.” The carnage complete, the reader adds a cautiously protective postscript: “Of course my name must not
be mentioned.” Professor X “and I are acquaintances and I like him very much as a person.” (Both manuscripts would be published elsewhere to glowing reviews.)
Actually, darts like these turned up less frequently than I expected. Even in the rejection files, where negativity reigned, the great bulk of the reader’s
reports seemed fair-minded and persuasive. Put simply, a rejected manuscript usually appeared to deserve its fate.
The final arbiters were Alfred A. Knopf, his wife Blanche Knopf (who took over as company president in 1957) and their editor in chief, Harold Strauss.
After a manuscript was judged to be wrong for the list — a process that included input from numerous people — a rejection letter would follow, often written
by the publisher himself. Sometimes the problem was financial. Alfred Knopf personally turned down R. R. Palmer’s classic, “The Age of the Democratic Revolution,”
telling the Princeton historian that his book would never earn back the $7,750 in “total production costs” the project would require — a big mistake, it
turned out. He rejected a biography of Sir Robert Walpole by the distinguished British historian J. H. Plumb, claiming that the manuscript, while “a good
piece of history,” would be lucky to sell 750 copies in the United States. And he declined a manuscript by William Appleman Williams, the father of New
Left diplomatic history, writing to him that “fundamentally your book would be an editorial in hard covers, and it is difficult almost to the point of
impossible to persuade readers to pay money for the privilege of reading” such works.
Going through these letters, one is struck by the more upbeat tone employed with younger scholars. Though the Knopfs and Strauss had little use for a revised
doctoral dissertation — that, they believed, was the reason God created university presses — they understood that cultivating fresh talent was a process
in which doors must remain open, and that the next manuscript might well be the charm. A typical rejection letter to a newly minted historian would conclude
with Alfred Knopf’s prediction that “one of these days we will have something from you that we can publish with gusto.”
What most disturbed the Knopfs and Strauss were auspicious projects by accomplished scholars that failed to measure up. Upon receiving a long-anticipated
manuscript in 1952 from John Hope Franklin, whose earlier book, “From Slavery to Freedom,” had sold well for Knopf, Strauss responded: “I am terribly sorry
to have to tell you that, while we recognize the scholarly merits of the manuscript, we are deeply disappointed in its trade possibilities. We feel that
you have completely missed your chance to write a colorful and dramatic book.” In 1958, Alfred Knopf sent this pointed note to T. Harry Williams, a professor
of Southern history, who also had published a successful book with the company a few years before: “Dear Harry — I am terribly sorry because I would love
to have a really good manuscript from you, but ‘Americans at War’ isn’t it.”
(Williams wasn’t amused. “Enclosed is a check for $1,” he replied, “which is sufficient for return postage first class. I would appreciate getting the manuscript
back immediately.”)
To be continued.
Continued from post 1.
Such was Knopf’s reputation, however, that authors kept lining up for more. Indeed, in the years between 1940 and 1980, it would have been possible to staff
a distinguished history department using scholars who published important books at Knopf after having at least one of their previous works rejected there
— a roster that includes Williams, whose “Huey Long” won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1970; Tuchman, whose biggest sellers for Knopf included “A
Distant Mirror” and “The March of Folly”; Kenneth Stampp, whose 1956 book “The Peculiar Institution” revolutionized the study of American slavery; and
Michael Kammen, whose “People of Paradox” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1973.
Today, as publishers eschew the finished manuscript and spit out contracts based on a sketchy outline or even less, the scripting of rejection letters has
become something of a lost art. It’s hard to imagine a current publisher dictating the sort of response that Alfred Knopf sent to a prominent
Columbia University
historian in the 1950s. “This time there’s no point in trying to be kind,” it said. “Your manuscript is utterly hopeless as a candidate for our list. I
never thought the subject worth a damn to begin with and I don’t think it’s worth a damn now. Lay off, MacDuff.”
Now, that’s a rejection letter.
David Oshinsky holds the Jack S. Blanton chair in history at the University of Texas at Austin. His most recent book, “Polio: An American Story,” won the
2006 Pulitzer Prize for history.
Bob
I love random, somewhat geeky, fun editorials like this one, and I have this urge to go look up the author's book now.
Okay, so I have nothing constructive to say here. Just wanted to keep the post from sinking down the list because I liked it.
And I bet the Anne Frank rejecters were kicking themselves the hardest and the longest. Talk about a lucrative sign-on!
Random? Somewhat geeky?
Well, you're probably right. I'm glad you liked it. And, thanks for keeping the topic from disappearing.
Bob
Bob, this is interesting. But it makes sense that some books which eventually turned out to be big hits were rejected at first. I mean it's really no different than differences among people who read books. Some people hate certain styles of writing or certain authors that others love.
On a similar topic, I've also gotten a kick out of hearing that certain actors have turned down movie roles that they later regret turning down when the movie is made and makes mega millions for the actor who did not turn it down.
Well, geeky in the sense that a historian has gone and researched popular response to other works in his field, and then made an entertaining write-up of it.
Becky, I agree, it's a little bit of, almost spiteful Schadenfreude. You think you're so brilliant and successful? Look what you missed!
it's really funny, actually, this is exactly what originally happened to harry potter, she wasn't able to get a deal for the first book anywhere, an then finally someone commissioned something like 500 copies, and now she's earning milions.
Wow, I guess I'll dig up those short stories I wrote in fourth grade. Maybe the teacher will regret that she gave me a c on most of them.
Bob
Lol! Yeah, blbobby, guess that might be.
Wow! This article is inspiring! You in to history?