Writers Tricks of the Trade Volume 6 Issue 3

Books That Almost Weren’t Published (Cont’d) plied with complied with. After all, when a big-time publisher shows interest in your manuscript, you damn well do as he asks. After all of the back-and-forth, Gottlieb lost interest in the book, and sent this rejection to Toole: "With all its wonderfulness ... [the book] does not have a reason. It isn't really about anything. And that's something no one can do anything about." Imagine if the producers of Seinfeld had said that. Anyway, in view of the fact that it eventually won a Pulitzer, Gottlieb probably missed the boat there. Unfortunately after that rejection no one else wanted the book either, and five years later Toole committed suicide. However his mother kept his manuscript, and set out on a seven-year mission to get her son's work published, determined to prove to the world he was the genius she believed him to be. Sadly, her submissions to publishers (pretty much all of them, with the exception of Simon & Schuster) resulted in rejection. Then she set her sights on author Walker Percy, a winner of the National Book Award. In fact she pretty much stalked him until he agreed to read the manuscript. According to Percy he'd hoped it was so bad he could discard it after reading a couple of pages, but after finishing the manuscript, he penned a letter to Toole's mother filled with every synonym for "extraordinary." Thanks to his efforts, it was published ten years after Toole died. #3 And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberrry Street By Dr. Seuss THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL Before finding success as an author, Dr. Seuss (aka Theodor Seuss Geisel) was a advertisement writer and illustrator who spent time polishing his first book on the side while conjuring ways to get people to buy more beer and bug spray at his day job. His first children's book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected by everyone who saw it. According to Seuss, the manuscript was rejected by 27 publishers with a unanimous verdict — just too different and much too "silly." Rejected by 27 children's book publishers for being too silly? Can’t you just imagine a grumpy, cigar-chomping editor skimming over the work of the soon-to-be undisputed master of the illustrated children's book and saying, "What is this garbage? Everything rhymes, even when it doesn't and he makes up words. Does this clown think writing childrens’ books is a joke?" Rejection can turn even the most lovable man into a defeated mess. After this barrage of rejections, Dr. Seuss vowed to torch the manuscript. But fate stepped in when he bumped into an old friend, Marshall McClintock, on the very same day that McClintock had become the children's book editor for Vanguard Press. Maybe just felt sorry for his old friend, although we would like to think he loved the book. At any rate, he agreed to publish it and the rest is history. WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE PAGE 25 JUST THINK WE MAY NEVER HAVE KNOWN THE CAT IN THE HAT AND ALL OF THE WONDERFUL SEUSS CHARACTERS MAY - JUNE 2016

Writers Tricks of the Trade Volume 6 Issue 3 | Page 33