but they don’t add up to the sort of swill that I envisaged making up a really knockout marketing event. Too bad.
B’s new book, we all agreed here, has three pages, two paragraphs, one clause, seven and a half phrases, thirty-seven sentences, and four hundred and sixty-five words of keen, knee-weakening majesty, but the rest of the book is kind of blah, so we figured, “oh, fuck it,” alas.
What a remarkable slab of a book this is!—but we have room on our list for only one such slab a year, and this year’s loser has already been contracted for. Best to B.
I must confess that I found the plot of B’s new offering confusing and elusive, but that’s a failing I guess I’ll have to live with in this vale of tears.
I liked lots of B’s at times extraordinary new novel, but the author seems somewhat too pleased with himself, but perhaps I’m not the right editor for such a difficult work.
B’s latest foray into his standard porno-fiction is often elegant and even beautiful, but it lacks the punch of the short-story collection of his that we passed on last year. Thanks so much for letting me see the work of this important author.
B’s work simply lacks the dishonesty and superficiality of the work that we cotton to here at Himmler-Aspen, at least in this woman’s opinion, and so I’m afraid that I’ll have to pass again on this new novel.
We loved, really loved, this excursion into rage and bitterness, but I’m sure that another editor somewhere will love it even more.
It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve held on to B’s manuscript for seventeen months, so I’m sending it back to you, still unread, as you know.
I’ll have to say no again, I’m sorry to say, to B’s terrific new book, since, as you know, Van Cleef & Arpels no longer publishes anything that resembles books.
We were impressed by B’s sly and ingenious new novel, but we have at least nine really bad books under contract, and are seriously overextended at the present time.
I’m afraid that I have no record of ever receiving B’s manuscript of humorous essays. It’s been a madhouse here since our merger with Metro Yahoo Collins Spielberg. If I come across it I’ll have it returned by messenger immediately.
SEA OF SERENITY
In the haze, there can be discerned, perhaps, a dark grave, an Italian sea, an ideal copy of the lyre of Orpheus, and an arbor of formidable vines among whose bilious green rests a solitary rose of sorrow. Alas! the head they all adore aches still with the kiss of the enormous queen, and what a lariat-spinner she can sardonically be. And there she stands, or, actually, emerges, emerges steadily and slowly from a crepuscular violet and lavender that informs the entire room! There glows, as well, the golden hair that is popular with every true son of Greece, an odd collection of rogues, of course, many of them actually Italian, covered, most usually, with ashes like unto grime on a smeared window, through which most travelers cannot see the horizon. Just as well, since it was never intended that they see anything at all. What a blague! What a jape! A pale-pink hydrangea complements the daguerrotypes of the azure sea, although “azure” is a word that creative-writing cliques insist should never be used in, well, creative writing. And we are well aware of what that is! As something more than mere decoration, assemblage doyens and their faithful docents claim that a flame-colored scarf is central to just about everything; as are, too, the Lord of the Volcano, three green glass eyes, peace be upon them, two Frostian spondees, dragons’ teeth (as usual), and a certain implacable scarlet. None of these earthy, sublunary things can manage (despite their changing dispositions within the space of this really beautiful, if somewhat fruity, fake Louis xvi apartment, complete with upholstered jakes) to derange the pure given whole, the serene quiver of Sacred Art, which is always as astonishing and inevitable, but
B’s new book, we all agreed here, has three pages, two paragraphs, one clause, seven and a half phrases, thirty-seven sentences, and four hundred and sixty-five words of keen, knee-weakening majesty, but the rest of the book is kind of blah, so we figured, “oh, fuck it,” alas.
What a remarkable slab of a book this is!—but we have room on our list for only one such slab a year, and this year’s loser has already been contracted for. Best to B.
I must confess that I found the plot of B’s new offering confusing and elusive, but that’s a failing I guess I’ll have to live with in this vale of tears.
I liked lots of B’s at times extraordinary new novel, but the author seems somewhat too pleased with himself, but perhaps I’m not the right editor for such a difficult work.
B’s latest foray into his standard porno-fiction is often elegant and even beautiful, but it lacks the punch of the short-story collection of his that we passed on last year. Thanks so much for letting me see the work of this important author.
B’s work simply lacks the dishonesty and superficiality of the work that we cotton to here at Himmler-Aspen, at least in this woman’s opinion, and so I’m afraid that I’ll have to pass again on this new novel.
We loved, really loved, this excursion into rage and bitterness, but I’m sure that another editor somewhere will love it even more.
It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve held on to B’s manuscript for seventeen months, so I’m sending it back to you, still unread, as you know.
I’ll have to say no again, I’m sorry to say, to B’s terrific new book, since, as you know, Van Cleef & Arpels no longer publishes anything that resembles books.
We were impressed by B’s sly and ingenious new novel, but we have at least nine really bad books under contract, and are seriously overextended at the present time.
I’m afraid that I have no record of ever receiving B’s manuscript of humorous essays. It’s been a madhouse here since our merger with Metro Yahoo Collins Spielberg. If I come across it I’ll have it returned by messenger immediately.
SEA OF SERENITY
In the haze, there can be discerned, perhaps, a dark grave, an Italian sea, an ideal copy of the lyre of Orpheus, and an arbor of formidable vines among whose bilious green rests a solitary rose of sorrow. Alas! the head they all adore aches still with the kiss of the enormous queen, and what a lariat-spinner she can sardonically be. And there she stands, or, actually, emerges, emerges steadily and slowly from a crepuscular violet and lavender that informs the entire room! There glows, as well, the golden hair that is popular with every true son of Greece, an odd collection of rogues, of course, many of them actually Italian, covered, most usually, with ashes like unto grime on a smeared window, through which most travelers cannot see the horizon. Just as well, since it was never intended that they see anything at all. What a blague! What a jape! A pale-pink hydrangea complements the daguerrotypes of the azure sea, although “azure” is a word that creative-writing cliques insist should never be used in, well, creative writing. And we are well aware of what that is! As something more than mere decoration, assemblage doyens and their faithful docents claim that a flame-colored scarf is central to just about everything; as are, too, the Lord of the Volcano, three green glass eyes, peace be upon them, two Frostian spondees, dragons’ teeth (as usual), and a certain implacable scarlet. None of these earthy, sublunary things can manage (despite their changing dispositions within the space of this really beautiful, if somewhat fruity, fake Louis xvi apartment, complete with upholstered jakes) to derange the pure given whole, the serene quiver of Sacred Art, which is always as astonishing and inevitable, but
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