Word: manuscript
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Several of us read your untitled novel here with admiration for writing and style. Jerzy Kosinski comes to mind as a point of comparison when reading the stark, chilly, episodic incidents you have set down. The drawback to the manuscript, as it stands, is that it doesn't add up to a satisfactory whole...
...rejection slips go. Except . . . what Houghton Mifflin, the rejecting publishers, did not know was that they were on the receiving end of a sting. The manuscript they turned down in 1977 was a freshly typed copy of Steps, a Kosinski novel that had won the National Book Award...
...hoax chosen by Chuck Ross, a Los Angeles freelance writer out to prove what thousands of aspiring first novelists already know: it is virtually impossible for an unknown author to break into print through the U.S. mails with what is known in the trade as an "over the transom" manuscript. One of the extremely rare exceptions to the rule was Judith Guest's Ordinary People...
...chorus of refusals. "It seems too fragmented and dreamlike to be a good commercial bet," wrote Lurton Blassingame. "We regret that we do not have the time here to read unsolicited fiction," explained James Brown. Candida Donadio & Associates demurred with, "When all is said and done, we felt the manuscript lacked that all-important dramatic tension." And from the office of Knox Burger after two follow-up letters from Ross: "I'm very sorry, but we have no record of having received your MS. or postage.' Kosinski is philosophical about the fact that his award-winning, experimental novel...
...solve the problem of getting an unsolicited manuscript published? "Only by the persistence of the author," says Kosinski. Or the persistence of the hoaxer. Next time Ross submits the Polish-born author's novel he might keep an eye on the bestseller list and give the manuscript a more current title. Say, The Complete Book of Steps...