A LETTER OF COMPLAINT & A REJECTED STORY
TRANSMITTED & WRITTEN BY JEFF CALLICO
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[Introductory editor's note: Hi. Over the last few weeks, we received several submissions from a certain Mr. Jeff Callico. Each submission, we rejected within a day, if not an hour. Our rejection notes ran the spectrum from constructive to absurd. He submitted a story involving a talking dog, for example, and we suggested he read Arthur Bradford (constructive). He submitted something else we can't remember, for example, and we suggested he only send us stories that made us see God (absurd). After a few rejections, Mr. Callico began to insult us, saying nothing he'd read on the site was particularly good, saying such things as "Guess I didn't fit into your circle of favorite writerly types," saying that the eyeshot editor has "a frog for a brain . . . and I really hope no one bothers to kiss it." And yet he continued to submit and the Eyeshot editor continued to reject, and reject as bluntly and as harshly as he could, considering Mr. Callico's lack of artistic humility and his willingness to resort to insult. And then he sent the note below, which entertained us! And so we figured we'd post that note, hoping that it'd entertain you too. And we also figured we'd follow that note by posting the story (originally rejected) that's referred to in Mr. Callico's entertaining letter of complaint. It is entirely possible that we have no idea what we're doing, and we'd be the first to agree that we lack "expertise and tact." And since it's possible we made a massive mistake when it came to our assessment of Mr. Callico's writing, we would like you to read his complaint and his story and judge Mr. Callico's talents for yourself. It's literary democracy in action, sort of.] From: Jeff
Callico
Why send anything at all to you? Rejection is obviously your middle name. No matter what I send -- even if it were "appropriate" for your "website" -- you would reject it anyway because of the author's name attached to it. So there you have it. And I cannot fathom your conviction that the Eyeshot pieces you referred me to are of any quality. To me they were verbose in the most extreme. I think what we have here is a person who wouldn't recognize quality work if it walked up and struck him in the face. What we have here is an "editor" who is merely trying to discourage submission simply by rejecting everything sent, and giving lamebrain reasons for such rejection. Believe me, I've been rejected before, but not by anyone with your lack of expertise and tact. I should have known something was up from the very beginning: Your "website" does not have a home page. Don't you find that odd? I happen to be very proud of the "Horizontal" piece, and many others who have read it have enjoyed it. Maybe that's why it's been published elsewhere. To read that it caused eye-rolling for you proves to me that you have no concept of what can be done with language. For you, FLUFF IS KING. All you want on your "website" is fluff, pure and simple. Well, I don't write fluff. I noticed, however, that you yourself do. Yes, your piece is FLUFF. Perfect for your own "site". You win. Eyeshot is wrong for this author; its "editor" is about as intelligent as a Mars rock. * THE HORIZONTAL TAKES ON THE VERTICAL
Sometimes things just happen. Other times they just start happening. Like when ice starts to melt, or thaw. Usually the ones that require a slow process are the most interesting, but require a lot of patience from the one who is waiting on them to happen -- or to have happened. Take today for example; I'm waiting at a bus stop for a bus to come. (I could have been waiting on someone else to pick me up, but there is no one else.) I get to the covered stop by 7:25 in the morning and at 8:09 there's no fucking bus. Well, today I chose to be a moderately patient person, so I wait a little longer. The cars and trucks and bicycles keep passing but not one of them is a bus. It gets to be 8:51 and I have seen no fucking busses. Fuck it, I say. I'm walking. As I rise from the bench I realize I may have made it to my destination had I just started walking at the 8:09 mark. At least I would have been closer. So here it is, the theme: I started walking and therefore made something start happening. The bus for all I know never came to pick me up but I picked myself up off that fucking bench and got to where I was going. Sometimes things happen and we don't know why. But we're there, right
there, taking some degree of solace in the fact that we ourselves are always
"happening"--kind of like objects falling from a shelf, avoiding in ignorance
the hands that are so desperately trying to catch us.
[Other stories elsewhere online by Mr. Callico, whose birthday is today, January 21st, are here, here, here, and here.] [Forever after at http://eyeshot.net/callico.html]
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