Great post. Reminds me of a book I read many, many years ago called
You Can Write a Romance (And Get it Published!) by Yvonne MacManus, which I read to get insight into the publishing business even though I wasn't at all into romances. (Ah, 1983, I see inside the cover...)
Here's a brief quote along those same lines from that book, as the author discusses the slush pile and such:
There's an anecdote told about the late Bennett Cerf. Apparently, one of his readers at Random House returned a submission with a standard rejection form. The author, irate, wrote directly to Mr. Cerf in protest.
Dear Mr. Cerf:
I was aghast at the return of my manuscript when it wasn't even given a complete reading. I know no one there read the entire book because I stapled some of the pages together before sending it to you. It came back with the pages still stapled!
As gossip has it, the letter went on and on in furious indignation. And as the story goes, Mr. Cerf allegedly wrote back: "My dear sir...one does not have to eat the whole egg to know that it is rotten."
I consider the slush pile much like those preliminary auditions for
American Idol, in which Simon
et al destroy the dreams of singer after singer from hearing only a few lines of a single song. Some singers insist on singing more, plead that "everyone I know says I sound just like Mariah!," but the experts remain unmoved.
Now and then they might miss a gem, sure...but for the most part, their instant judgment is pretty sound, and most certainly it is when dealing with horribly atonal, Really Really Bad Singers.
--Q
