Literary rejection: the other white meat.

Got a decently long email rejection that went on for pages outlining my small, embarrassing mistakes and the larger problems with my story—no style, nothing that says this is Eileen. (And I had worried my story was all style, no plot.) I had misspelled freshman and made other "miscalibrations" (This isn't a word, but poets like to make words up and they can when they have degrees from Harvard.) I was aghast and awed.

At first I felt this editor was an overeducated prig who recommended I read people I’d never heard of—Cyril Connolly's book is in my bag right now--but then I came to admire him for his attentions to lil ol’ me. I must have something to elicit this reponse. So I googled him.

He is a renaissance man, not just a poet, but a designer of posters and books who edits several literary journals, writes esoteric blogs and quotes more writers I’ve never heard of. He translates books from German and Spanish. (He's probably a musician, too.)

There was something about his formerly skinny child-self and now schlubby academic that made me feel depressed. Possibly I felt deflated for lacking the training and intellect he worked so hard at inflating, but it was that black hole feeling I get when I'm around an active addict and our divorce attorney. He uses so many words, quotes so many people, puts up so many ideas, and says so little--a man hiding behind his intellect.  He is also a committed atheist and organizes meetings for atheists (a form of church?). If he didn’t believe in words, I would have cried for the emptiness of him. And then--boom!-- I get it; he is ex.