Occasionally atrocious

Every writer -- even the great ones -- suffers rejection. Several years ago, The Missouri Review went digging in the Alfred A. Knopf archives and retrieved a collection of in-house readers' reports documenting the publisher's rejection of several notable authors. In "Publication is Not Recommended: From the Knopf Archives," the Review reprinted many of the reports. Here's an excerpt of the article, featuring the original text of several rejections.

July 20, 2012