How This Critter Crits : The How of Rejection by Jay Squires |
NOTE: THE POST BELOW APPEARED ON JULY 24, 2013 ON MY BLOG, JaySquires' SeptuagenarianJourney. ENJOY! THE HOW OF REJECTION He writes about a young man (the writer, William) needing a haircut; having little money, he goes to a barber college where he can get one for 15 cents. (This took place in the thirties.) While he is waiting for his turn he strikes up a conversation with a sixteen-year-old lad, also down on his luck, and waiting for a haircut. The young man tells him he is heading to Portland, Oregon since there is no work in the lettuce fields of Salinas, which is in California. And that brings me to Saroyan's narrative. And I quote: "I wanted to tell him how it was with me: rejected story from Scribner's, rejected essay from The Yale Review, no money for decent cigarettes, worn shoes, old shirts, but I was afraid to make something of my own troubles. A writer's troubles are always boring, a bit unreal. People are apt to feel, Well, who asked you to write in the first place? A man must pretend not to be a writer. I said, 'Good luck North.'" A fine short story, worth every writer's perusal. But it was just the reading of that one paragraph that set me to thinking about the life of the writer then (1933), and now. And it got me thinking philosophically about the writer back then and at present. About their psyches. About the subtle deeper layers, then and now. And I'm way out of my own depth here, I know that. But has that ever stopped me before? Thinking about it, and including it in my blog, are two different things, though. The decision maker was that my Kindle Fire alerted me I need to charge it now! I had just enough juice left to type out the above quote before the screen went gray. The electronic age—how apt is that? "I wanted to tell him how it was with me: rejected story from Scribner's, rejected essay from The Yale Review." I'll go back and pick up the rest of the quote later, but right now the keynote difference between the two parts of the quote is not the results of rejection but how one is rejected. And the very important impact time has on rejection. Very important! Many writers are not old enough to have experienced the submission/rejection phase of which Saroyan speaks. I am, and some of you are. What Saroyan had to do was write, edit and put in its final polished form the manuscript he wanted to submit. He knew there was protocol. The editor, or his lackey, would be looking for a reason not to have to finish a piece to its end. There were hundreds that had to be waded through before closing time. The writer couldn't fold it and slip it in a regular size envelope. Folding not allowed. So, he had to purchase manila envelopes. He needed two for each manuscript—one in which to put the Ms along with the second, folded, stamped manila envelope—alas! for the returned Ms. With the returned Ms would be the rejection slip, suitable for framing, wallpapering or wadding up. If Mr. Saroyan were fortunate there would be no coffee stains or other tale-tale signs on it, so he would be able to use the almost virgin Ms to send to the next one on the list. Each submission represented about a month out of the writer's life. Thirty days. Maybe even longer. And each additional unsuccessful month meant a little more abrasion to his soul. But I promised not to talk about the effects of rejection just now. Only the process, the how, of rejection. Effort. Money. Time. These always have been and always will be the constants. How they are allocated will differ over the years. Mr. Saroyan had a typewriter. While he created, he had to x-out the offending words, writing the corrected ones above or below the lines. But for his finished Ms he needed perfection (back in an age without white-out or correcto-tape) and if that meant tossing an otherwise perfectly good page because in the last line he wrote to instead of too, so be it! Effort. Time. Then came the computer age! Just having the ability to make all the editing changes on the screen (with spell-check, find and delete, insert, cut and paste) before the Ms is printed, the computer presented an enormous saving in time and effort. And then, with the advent of the internet, all of a sudden Scribner's, The Yale Review and a hundred-thousand other magazine and many book publishers have moved right next door. So to speak. There goes the neighborhood!—again, so to speak. Now the writer whips his Ms into near perfection, pulls the publisher up on-line, pastes or attaches the Ms, pushes the submit button, and voila!, he is about ten days, instead of thirty from rejection—or acceptance, let's not forget that, with the payment sent to his Pay-pal account. [This blogster is getting frugal in his retirement. If this post looks familiar to any of you it is because it was posted in my once lively, now defunct, Jay Squires Writer's Workshop Newsletter. I think it has enough general interest it should be included here. Curiously, I had an earlier blog post entitled THEN AND NOW (A WRITER'S LIFE)—a title which I totally plagiarized myself by using in my Newsletter (fortunately, there's a law against suing oneself or I'd lose what little income I have in my retirement—I had that good a case against me!) Even more curiously, I apparently had forgotten I used this same title, though the content in the two articles was entirely different. Anyway ... hence the PART II here.] * * *
(A Writer's Life)
It was about 1961 or '62. I had just moved from a comfortable room in my parents' home to a flat in San Francisco I shared with three others, only one of whom I remember. His name was Joe, and I remember him because he, like me, left a comfortable home in Santa Maria, California, to experience life in San Francisco.We were oh-so-ready to begin our suffering.  Joe knew one of the others who rented the flat, so he was given the only extra bed. I slept on a mat—I believe on the floor of the largish closet, though I'm not sure whether it was in the closet or whether that was my idealized version of where a suffering artist might sleep. In defense of my poor memory, it was over 50 years ago and we were only there a couple of nights … since I was not aware I was to be expected to share in the rent. Barely having enough for the bus trip from Santa Maria, and not knowing the first thing about real suffering, as in working, or living on the streets, I phoned my parents to wire bus fare to me. Which they did. While waiting for the money for bus fare, Joe and I did enjoy our own brand of suffering during those few days. We visited rundown bars on the wharf where I gagged down my first beer laced with equal parts tomato and clam juice. In the evening we pridefully donned our worn-at-the-knees Levis and visited more upscale bars where the beat poets frequented. I remember my heart racing at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's reading of one of his poems, accompanied by a jazz combo, and joining with the several others in the bar snapping my fingers in applause when it was over. The last line of his poem still resonates in me: "You! You in your Brooks Brother's suit, you son of a bitch!" It was so cool! Other times we sat on the curb with bums, grilling them as grist for future stories and poems. Joe was a much better writer than I. His poetry was full of angst and vulgarity. I practiced for the same effect in my prose, but to my eyes it was a diluted version of his. How could it be otherwise? I came from parents who loved me unconditionally. He came from a broken home and lived with his mother. My dad was a cop. His was a seldom seen slumlord for illegal Mexican farm workers. In short, I was a suppressed, middle-class, spoiled, white boy. He was a free spirit, a low-born, poor, Mexican boy. How much better was he equipped to be a poet? * * *
I feel so privileged to have wallowed, however briefly and superficially, in the Beat tradition. To me, it was immediate and it was unique—just as every person feels his experiences in his generation are immediate, and unique. The Beat movement of the 50's and 60's, however, had its roots in the Romantic Era. The arts movement known as Romanticism evolved in the mid-1700's, and had its heyday somewhere in the mid-1800's. This came after centuries of oppression by the church and the state, where the individual creative person had little voice except to glorify and enlarge the institutions that wielded power over him. Man was depersonalized and subordinate. Then came what I would describe as the literary big bang. Thanks to The Literature Network we have this quote that defines it: "First and foremost, Romanticism is concerned with the individual more than with society. The individual consciousness and especially the individual imagination are especially fascinating for the Romantics. 'Melancholy' was quite the buzzword for the Romantic poets, and altered states of consciousness were often sought after in order to enhance one’s creative potential." [Italics mine]* Substitute "Beat" for "Romantic" and it's tantamount to walking out of the Romantic door and into the Beat door. The effects of my experiences persist stubbornly over time. The Romantic era, the Beat era and yes, even the Hippy era churn through the blood in this 73 year-old body. Oh, yes, and in very proper Romantic and Beat tradition, part of me still mourns my lack of suffering, the accidental ingredients coming together at my birth, and my middle-class, love-induced upbringing that always kept me, and will keep me forever, in Joe's shadow, spread out over 50 years. Individually and collectively, we are cultural sponges. Movements and traditions are sucked in and are slow to drain from us. Individually, we cling to the belief we are unique unto ourselves. Yet, we are products of the traditions and art forms that preceded us. And the best—the very best—of what we are doing today resonates with the collective soul to reach far into the future and play into the artistic lifestyles of those creators generations hence. It seems appropriate to end this with the famous poem by John Donne** "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." * For the complete article visit: http://bit.ly/yOJyw4. ** No Man Is an Island, By John Donne, 1624
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