Some Reasons for Being Rejected

I SOMETIMES wonder by what wireless communication editors attain their unanimity of attitude and phrase. Presumably seated in many several offices, how do they so often contrive to say the same thing at the same time? A year or two ago illustrated magazines exhibited a brief but conspicuous identity in cover designs, all showing infancy in bedtime costume. For a while children in nighties and pajamas capered in droves over the counters of all stationers. Now, how did every artist know that every other artist was going to the night nursery for models?

Looking back over a dozen years of Grub Street, I find that the fashions for editors are just as contagious as those for illustrators. By seeing the date alone of a rejection, I can give the editorial reasons without further investigation as to what editor or what magazine. I write as one who has attained the doubtful dignity of the personal letter of refusal. I find that ten years ago editors very generally rejected me because my manuscripts did not ‘quite compel acceptance.’ Now this is an over-civil statement of the over-civility of my gentle little sketches and tales. The truth is they grew up in New England and were never trained in cowboy manners. ‘ Compelling acceptance ’ always suggests to my mind a mustachio’d ranchman presenting a pistol and a check to some lone bank clerk and demanding gold in exchange. This money-or-your-life method of ’ compelling acceptance ’ is as impossible to my stories as it would be to the ladies, fragrant with boxwood and lemon verbena, about whom I like to write.

A few years later the phrase polite for ‘ no admittance’ changed. The buffet became more robust and ringing. Editors at this period asked for ‘ a little more ginger.’ Six or seven years ago all editors were crying for ‘ginger.’ I could not give it to them, but so many other people could and did, that presently they had enough ginger and were passing on to demand stronger condiment: they no longer wanted ginger, but ‘a little more pep, please.’ Editors at this stage were becoming less gentle in language as well as in desires. At first I merely could not ‘quite compel acceptance,’ but later rebuff was administered in figurative speech that became constantly more arresting. ‘Ginger’ and ‘pep’ were mild and gastronomic in suggestion, but from the ‘ pep ’ period on, editorial imagery has been becoming more and more vigorous.

For a long time ‘punch’ dominated the vocabulary and intentions of all periodicals. It made no difference what other accomplishments a manuscript might possess: if it could not ‘ punch,’ it might as well stay at home. A writer had no choice but to drop contemplation, remove his coat, hand his spectacles to his wife, adopt the language of the prize-ring and ‘ punch ’ his reader — an audacious enterprise and productive of more unanimity in rejection than any other course I have pursued.

My literary career under enforced editorial guidance has steadily advanced from suavity to violence. At first I tried merely to ‘compel attention’; next I obediently served ‘ginger’ and ‘pep’; after that, weakly and mildly, have I endeavored to ‘punch;’ but there are progressive ordeals yet before me. To ‘punch’ in the prizefight there is allowed a degree of decorum; there are still rules for the game in ‘punching,’ but I discover that even ‘punch’ is obsolescent. This morning an editor returns my offerings with the comment, ‘Excellent of their kind, but I prefer stories with more “ kick ”! ’ Can I, must I, ‘kick’?

According to the cumulative demand of editors for ferocity, after ‘ kick, ’ what? Next week shall I be requested to ‘stab’? To make a stiletto of the innocent, pen whose first efforts were taught manners by Sir Roger de Coverley? I wonder how Addison and Irving would have responded if they had been asked to ‘kick.’ My pained imagination looks forward into the years of bread-winning still before me, to read in fancy the reasons for future rejection, as editors become more frenzied and more figurative. Will it be: —

‘We are under orders to accept no freight at this dépôt except high explosives’; or, ‘No magazine can keep on the market to-day that is not prepared to blow the reader’s brains out.’

Two things I am pondering. Does the reader never long to be approached by methods of peace and propriety? Even if he is that ogre of the artist, the Tired Business Man, is drubbing my sole manner of meeting him? If it is not, it is high time you said so, reader, to ears having authority. If you do not speak out, the treatment in store for you is no exaggeration on my part. I am behind the scenes, and I know. I have it straight from Cæsar that I must ‘kick’ you, so impervious are you to ways of pleasantness.

The other thing I am pondering is, what will be the editorial reason for rejecting this essay.