Wrong, wrong, wrong

In my comments about Pushcart's Complete Rotten Reviews & Rejections a few days ago, I didn't offer many examples of those rotten reviews and rejections. Let me do that now.

Here is what reviewers said about works now recognized as classics.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: "... the only consolation which we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read."

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: "We fancy that any real child might be more puzzled than enchanted by this stiff, overwrought story."

'Oblivion lingers'

The poetry of Emily Dickinson: "Oblivion lingers in the immediate neighborhood."

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "... a book of the season only."

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: "Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer."

Moby Dick by Herman Melville: "... an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter of fact ..."

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoi: "Sentimental rubbish ... Show me one page that contains an idea."

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman: "Of course, to call it poetry, in any sense, would be mere abuse of language."

And here are a few comments made by publishers in their rejection letters:

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck: "Regret the American public is not interested in anything on China."

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle: "Neither long enough for a serial nor short enough for a single story."

Sanctuary by William Faulkner: "Good God, I can't publish this. We'd both be in jail."

The Diary of Anne Frank: "The girl doesn't, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the 'curiosity' level."

"Unpublishable."

The Last of the Plainsmen by Zane Grey: "I do not see anything in this to convince me you can write either narrative or fiction."

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: "I haven't the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say."

The Blessing Way by Tony Hillman: "If you insist on rewriting this, get rid of all that Indian stuff."

A Separate Peace by John Knowles: "I feel rather hopeless about his having a future.:"

The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand: "Unpublishable."

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells: "It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader."

Oh, well. We all make mistakes.