Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck: Rejection Letters From the Eyeshot Outbox

Rejection letters transmitted by the Eyeshot editor over the past dozen years have been selected from those previously posted on this site, ordered, cleaned-up, addled with rejections never before posted, and bound into book form by Barrelhouse Books.

It'll be availble on March 4. But you can preorder it now.

This collection of rejection letters may appeal to:

Humor enthusiasts who leave smart/funny books atop their toilets to peruse during single-sitting reading sessions and/or to impress house guests.

Creative-writing teachers looking to jazz up their syllabus with offbeat writing advice that'll surely at least lead to spirited classroom discussion.

Fans of slant autobiographies (gifted/generous readers may discern a warped portrait of the editor's life as he moves from Brooklyn (Greenpoint) to the Iowa Writers' Workshop (Iowa City) to Philadephia (Cheesesteak Gardens), maturing as human being and editor along the way).

Heavy users of Goodreads looking for something quick and easy to review/rate and thereby accelerate progress toward their 2014 reading goal.

Platonists (the rejection letters outline an ideal in the editor's mind -- and we're pretty sure Plato once had something to say about the space between the ideal and the real).

Former submittors interested in seeing if rejections they received made the cut.

Note: for a while we had the above Ornette Coleman record cover in place of the book's actual cover. For the record, the cover for "Ornette on Tenor" didn't influence the book's designer -- after seeing the cover, it occured to the Eyeshot editor person that the font and design scheme are in the same ballpark and so he thought he'd post this record cover to associate himself with Ornette Coleman, for obvious reasons involving in part the superficial attractivity of harmomelodics more than an understanding of it.

Very few selections from the 224-page book appear below (and if you scroll all the way down you'll see four nice blurbs)

It’s all intuition. And the “aura” of this one is sort of like a freckly yellow, which reminds me of bananas, which doesn’t make me want to post it. That’s a really terrible critique, I realize.

This is juvenile. No.

Learn to spell FELLATIO! I’m not going to post this because it’s not funny at all. But thanks for sending it.

Just because you have Word on your computer doesn’t mean you can just type something on a file and send it out. Not to sound like a condescending a-hole, but it doesn’t really seem like much effort has been expended or much pressure exerted on the language or much thought put into trying to affect a reader you’ve never met. So. Thanks and sorry and good luck.

YOU ARE SO ENTHUSIASTICALLY ALL OVER THE PLACE! WHICH IS A GOOD THING! WE LIKE ENTHUSIASM AND ENERGY! I WOULD SURELY LIKE TO DRINK ESPRESSO WITH YOU AND RUN AROUND AND CHAT AND THEN HAVE ACROBATIC SPORT SEX. BUT WHEN IT COMES TO READING WHAT YOU’VE WRITTEN IT’S LIKE TOO MUCH Y’KNOW LIKE TOO MUCH ENERGY AND ALL OVER THE PLACENESS AND SPORT SEX WHEN WHAT WE THINK WE REALLY LIKE TO SEE IS MORE CONTROLLED ENERGY NOT MANIA BUT SOMETHING MORE LIKE DIRECTED FOCUSED EFFUSIONS OF FORWARDLY PROPELLED PROSE IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN AND MAYBE SOME LIGHT PETTING AND SLOW CARESSES UNDER A WARM COMFORTER ON A COOL EARLY AUTUMN RAINY MORNING IF YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

Thanks for sending something but it’s really just not the sort of thing I’m looking to post. I’m really more interested in psychopathic overindulgence that’s nevertheless innocent and doe-eyed and charming and like totally LOL.

Four nice blurbs

Somewhere on the brutal truth continuum between Bill Hicks and Mussolini, Lee Klein's rejection letters are mini-masterpieces of literary criticism disguised as no-thank-yous from Writer's Hell. And yet, in each, a little lesson; a steadfast faith that says "I took the time to read what you created and this is exactly what I thought." They should be passing these things out under the pillows at MFA camp; we'd all be better off.

-- Blake Butler, author of There Is No Year and Sky Saw

To “decide” is to “cut,” and Lee Klein in the highly honed collection of rejections, Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck, wields a drawer full of gleaming cutlery, edgy edged instruments of decision. Surely, he holds his pen like a surgeon holds the scalpel. These serrated graphs of glee and screed are incisive incisions—katana, rattled sabers, sharp-tongued stilettos of the split-lipped kiss-off.

-- Michael Martone, Author of Michael Martone and Four for a Quarter

Sometimes writers who succeed against the odds brag about the number of rejections they've accumulated. A rejection from Eyeshot's Lee Klein is a whole different badge of honor. Like a letter from a serial killer on death row, your Tea Party inlaws, or the Pope, they're suitable for framing and brilliantly repugnant. I kind of want to send him a really shitty story just so I can get one of these in return.

-- Ryan Boudinot, author of Blueprints of the Afterlife

Lee Klein made me cry. He was the only editor ever to make me. This was back in 2002. I wish I still had the email. I remember it going something like, “whenever you have the instinct to write a line like that, delete it immediately, without prejudice.” I hated him for a while. I pictured him looking like the guy in that 90’s movie Heavy (the one with Liv Tyler), except housebound and with no redeemable qualities. Then, somewhere around 2004, I met him “IRL” and he was soft-spoken and sweet. It was harder to hate him after that. Reading all of these rejection letters here in this book made me finally fall a little in love with him, I think. I think if I had had access to (and disassociation from) these letters then, I might have fallen in love with him then. This is the funniest book I have read in a long time. It is also the smartest. I feel confused now, like I’m unsure whether to love or hate Lee Klein. But both of us are married now so it doesn’t really matter.

-- Elizabeth Ellen, author of Fast Machine

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