All New Rejection Letters: Special Promo Edition

I really like the phrase "horsecock of courage" but the lack of capitalization and punctuation distracted me too much. Thus I didn't read this closely or really consider it for Eyeshot. Sorry. But thanks and good luck.

Eyeshot hath always mostly favored holy fucking high-falutin pretentiousness. I found what you sent maybe a bit intentionally excessively alliterative/hyperbolic (which I don't mind at all, mostly) and I understood the juxtaposition game you're playing: Baudilliard plus Bieber plus Bondage. It's a pretty conventional tactic, right? A fun game to play. High-theory hermeneutical firepower targeting a quotidian low-culture something sump (bondage thanks to Fifty Shades of Gray I guess is same old/same old these days). Which is fine. And even if you're examining internet sewers, as you say, it seemed to me too dense, to the point that it kept knocking me out. I considered maybe asking you to condense it to its finest 1000 words, cutting out the intro etc and footnotes and just going with the most vivid Bieber-in-bondage images, and I suppose I'd happily look at a shorter vivid draft, but generally this won't work for Eyeshot as is. Change Beiber to Barthes or Beckett and we're onto something . . . But thanks for sending something and good luck finding a home for this and send something else whenever.

Thanks for sending these for Eyeshot and sorry for the slow-ish reply. Your approach is steady and clear and sincere, which is great, which should help you find homes for these somewhere soon. Eyeshot is not that home, though. Check out the site a bit and you'll see what I mean. We're really more swervy and pervy and, most likely, ironic/fuck-witted. But thanks again and good luck!

Thanks for sending something.

Here are images of Julien Alexander.

What was the name of the actor who played George on Seinfeld?

Anyway, this isn't right for the site. If you check out the archive you won't see anything with so many formats, which would require me to spend hours formatting it for the web.

I'm not lazy at all, but I do have a six-month-old daughter these days and, well, I'm not sure how much longer I have to live.

Maybe sixty years if I live really really long. Maybe less.

Maybe only twenty more years. Regardless, my life is nearly over.

I have spent too much of it at the computer. So I can't commit to rendering this so it fits the site's format. And then there's all sorts of stuff about content I might mention.

But I honestly didn't read the entire story because I was distracted by the formal shifting, knowing that it wasn't up Eyeshot's ever-narrowing alley of expertise.

Thanks again for sending something and good luck with this and everything else.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, at least in the northeast of ye olde USA. Enjoy!

You have a good instinct but it's splattering everywhere? What sucks is this sort of writing is a subgenre at this point. Ground has been broken and worked over and turned into a weird little mini mall where the brand-name stores are Kafka, Barthleme, Saunders, Marcus. What's required for a reader to stick with the story is precise language and the suggestion of meaning. Piling on weirdnesses quickly descends to whimsicality. If the language is a little loose and the weirdnesses seem out of hand, why bother? Also, when reading, I wondered if nothing of note had ever happened to you in your life? The sense while reading stuff like this is, for me, that the writer is hiding, playing a game, entertaining himself, passing the time at the computer writing weird stuff. I did it too for a time but I think it's maybe a dead end? What matters more is perception, expressing your own and influencing that of someone else? I don't really know. You're clearly interested in ideas and language, both of which can be expressed and excercised upon old-fashioned reality. Musil (Man w/o Qualities), Perec (Life), Danilo Kis (Garden, Ashes). Definitely check out Julien Gracq's A Balcony in the Forest -- extraordinary language applied to reality in such a way that everything seems just this side of psychedelic. I don't mean to get all pedantic. I'd say if you want to keep experimenting in this vein, you have to nail down your language a bit more. Throughout, maybe try to apply a little more pressure on every sentence. Solve it for clarity, efficiency, and flow. Anyway. Thanks again for sending this. Sorry for being a tool.

Thanks for sending something. No worries about cannabis glorification here. I'm more concerned that, for Eyeshot, this is probably too straightforward/clear. Sorry!

Thanks for sending this image. What is it? Spiderman banging his head against a window, instead of gazing on velvet Elvis or consuming dinner of green and orange and milk, with something like maybe a cat in a bucket in the corner? I like it. I won't be able to use it on Eyeshot but thanks for
sending it!

It's nice to get submissions from Thailand. I envision exotic postage on the e-mail envelope. Anyway, your story reads well and intrigues at first enough to keep reading but it's not right for Eyeshot. What happens is that over time a publication really only takes a certain sort of story that matches stories it's known to run. Now, if I were really enthusiastic about your story, Eyeshot's history wouldn't matter, but since I admired the opening but wasn't totally enthusiastic about posting it early on, it's not going to overcome the hurdle of what we've posted since 1999. I just figured I'd send a little bit of background so you know it's not that your story is sucky, it's that there's a narrow little window for acceptance that's open when I start reading and with each page the window closes a little more until it shuts.

Sorry for taking such a long time to reply. I totally suck these days. Submissions should be read and responded to much quicker so no one loses time wondering what the fuck. Anyway, you seem to write perfectly well -- things seem clear and evocative and all -- but the general gist isn't the sort of general gist that Eyeshot usually jizzes over. That's disgusting. I apologize. I'm not even sure I spelled jizz, as a verb, correctly. As a noun it would be jism, but jismizes seems off. A quick review of the archive will elucidate better than any statement I might make at this time, 4:13 on a Friday, tired after a long rainy run across the Ben Franklin bridge earlier, with an evening of baby care ahead of me.

Thanks for sending something and sorry I took so long to respond. I read much of this the day I received it but I'm not sure if I responded. I don't have a record of a response, so unlesss it too has been lost in a whale, please accept the following official response to what you sent: it reads well and clearly and, although I'm intrigued by the whale business and appreciate the pleasing, friendly, slightly touched tone, I don't think the story is ultimately right for Eyeshot, which may tend to post things that densely summarize the journeys of mailmen in whales, rendered in over-the-top language . . .

Thanks for sending something and sorry for the slowish reply. I liked how this started, how you were leading me along, driving me down the page to find out what was at the bottom of the staircase. It felt a little like a ploy to get a reader to read on, and so it felt to me a little fictional, but I read on, before maybe about a third of the way down I reached for a pack of gum and popped two pieces in my mouth, scrolled down a bit more, not really engaged, thinking that maybe I would have liked to have seen something like this that started closer to where it ends and felt a little more real. So I decided to write this little note of thanks and say I'm sorry for not reading more closely. That's the way it goes, though. A story early on either sort of compels close attention or not -- and it doesn't necessarily have to do with the story itself but more so the reader's state, the reader who in this case is me, who has read a bunch of submissions this afternoon and is looking forward to doing something else now? See: life is unfair. Maybe if I'd read it earlier? Maybe I would've written something different? Life is unfair but it's not totally arbitrary. It's probably semi-arbitrary, a blend of fate and chance. So I probably would've written something similar but different if I'd read it all the way through carefully with my coffee kicking first thing this morning.

Thanks for submitting. I like the way this starts and there's a nice moment with orange and organ but maybe a third of the way through little language-sensitivity alerts I registered at first got louder and proceeded to turn the orangey organ massaged uterus into -- for me, tired, on a lunch break in the sun, reading this for a second time but this time via my phone after eating some Asian buffet with copious hot sauce -- a bit of a language mush maybe overly conscious of syntax? "The pink was very warm" jumped out, followed by that D-heavy phrase. Lots of phrases like "what I know is this:" -- I sometimes see that voice around -- it's like a prose poem that's maybe too stylized and therefore fictional for me? If this story is about a hysterectomy I'd prefer not to have to fight a syntax scrim to see it? I'd prefer for my guts to be ripped out by something trying less to keep my attention with capitalization? Anyway, just a few thoughts. T hanks again and sorry and good luck and hello to your rabbit!

ATTENTION! WE BOLDLY SWITCH TO ALL CAPS AND A BLUEISH TEXT BOX TO INTERRUPT THIS BATCH OF RECENTLY TRANSMITTED REJECTION LETTERS TO ENCOURAGE READERS TO CONSIDER AT LEAST MAYBE THINKING ABOUT PREORDERING THANKS AND SORRY AND GOOD LUCK: REJECTION LETTERS FROM THE EYESHOT OUTBOX, SCHEDULED TO PUBLISH ON MARCH 4 THANKS TO THE COMMITTED, TALENTED, WELL-FIT FOLKS AT BARRELHOUSE BOOKS

YOU CAN READ SOME STUFF ABOUT IT.

YOU CAN PREORDER IT.

YOU CAN ADD IT TO YOUR GOODREADS PROFILE

AND NOW BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY DOWNWARD-SCROLLING REJECTIONS
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Hi - thanks for sending something again. This is a submission, right? No title? The movies are really just namedropped? "Melancholia" doesn't have anything to do with this? "Vertigo" is bleach blond hair, right? Anyway, keep at it and keep sending stuff. Seattle's bookstores more than make up for its extreme frowning upon jaywalkers.

As someone reading with an eye for Eyeshot, I'd say it started promisingly, I was rooting for it to win, but the end of the second paragraph, the thing about the bones, distracted me, knocked me out a little, and then I had trouble rooting for it after that, ultimately deciding that maybe the bar for straight-up boy/girl stories is a little higher and I need to read from word 1 to word last without so much as a flinch/mind fart.

It's maybe a little too G-rated for Eyeshot? Not that we need the socks to engage with the dirty word that rhymes with socks but in general the story is maybe too long and too wholesome? Thanks again and sorry!

Why American Apparel briefs at the end? Why the plug? I guess they characterize a little. But maybe unless it's about branding and identity consumption it's a shortcut to suggest that he's the sort of guy whose jizz is hot when he ejaculates into his American Apparel briefs. And what would my mah or pah or a colleague at work or infant daughter say if I posted this story and the phrase "ejaculate hot jizz" were read by them? Is there no other way to say it? It's a very direct way, to say it this way, sure, but hmm . . . . In general, overall, gist-wise, it's not right for Eyeshot -- the language is descriptive but maybe over-reliant on fragments and not sufficiently propelled for the site? Anyway, thanks and sorry and keep at it and send again whenever.

I more or less stopped reading after this sentence: "His chocolate cough drop wormhole eyes glistened eternal gratitude to the polished diamond of perfect feeling." And then I skimmed through some dialogue and saw "big tits, moist bush" and quit. It's not gonna work out between us. Sorry!

Hi -- I laughed at this -- the bit about striking out every at bat and blaming the dying kid -- and hearing myself laugh at least once usually is enough for acceptance. But I wanted the dying kid to die. He's a tool. In general, I liked this fine but don't think I'll post it -- maybe because it escalated as expected? Instead I'll ask you to send something else until we agree to post something, OK? Thanks for sending something and send something else soon!

Sorry for taking more than two weeks to reply. I hope you had an enjoyable Groundhogs' Day and Valentine's and now Presidents' Day. In the olden/golden days of Eyeshot, I may have accepted this piece since it's funny to envision an office meeting devolving or evolving or at the very least revolving around orgy action. "Brown butt holes that they hadn't thought to bleach" was a bold phrase, one that almost made me stop reading, not because I was disgusted, but because now that I'm a parent and an employee of an upstanding international organization, I'm not so sure I should present texts regarding such behavior in the office. If you'd like to revise so the meeting is efficient, productive, and so inspiring that everyone subsequently handles more work in less time and does so happily with no expectation of financial reward down the line, that'd be great. (I kid.) Anyway, thanks again for sending this and sorry and good luck!

Hi. Sorry. It just occurred to us that some readers might enjoy listening to Book Fight, which is a podcast run/performed by two friends from grad school and Philadelphia. Lately they've been reading "rejections" the Eyeshot Editor wrote for all those who donated some $$$ to Book Fight during their annual pledge drive. Now, it's a little weird to write rejections when you haven't received a submission and really have nothing to work with other than someone's name, so you might enjoy hearing me (I mean, the Eyeshot Editor) struggle with the form. These faux-rejections are read with precision and pizzazz by Mike (who edited the rejections book) or Tom and usually appear about midway through the hour-long episiodes. Every single one of these episodes is well worth an hour or so of your time.

THAT PREORDER LINK.

AND NOW PLEASE RETURN TO A CASUAL DOWNWARD SCROLL OF THE MOST RECENT REJECTIONARY CONTENT WE CAN PROVIDE
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Hi -- sorry I didn't respond "right quick" as promised when I responded to your last submission on February2. It was Groundhogs' Day and I apparently saw my shadow that day and became afraid and hid from submissions for fifteen days. I am not a groundhog and I don't think I've consciously seen my shadow in a while since I don't think I've been out walking while the sun's been shining in a while. At night, I don't think it's possible to be scared of your streetlight shadow because it changes so quickly, grows out of you as you pass a streetlight and recedes as you approach another streetlight. Does that sound right with regard to streetlight shadows? We gotta figure this shadow shit out. Anyway, I like the idea of the submission and momentarily thought about asking for futuristic opinion blurbs of a ton of names and things now common, thereby suggesting a world and the values of its inhabitants. But then I didn't want to ask you to totally rewrite this thing, essentially write something new really, since what if I didn't feel like it worked? Have you read The Circle by Eggers? You might like it, based on this submission. I wrote about it here -- but in general, with your submission, I liked the general idea but didn't particularly believe in the narrator or really find myself making any vocal noises expressing mirth while reading, which seems like an important thing for a reader to do when reading something like this.

Sapiophile is a great word. Thanks for teaching me something. At first I thought maybe it was "love of toads," since sapo in Spanish is toad, or maybe frog. I googled it and saw what it meant. I also really like the idea that books are babies and donating them to the library is like giving them up for adoption. I had clicked the link in your cover letter and so knew that you were adopted -- and that gave the story an extra personal dimension I really liked (made it feel real etc) but of course only people who knew you'd been adopted would read the story that way. I wasn't totally clear on who the divorcing couple was -- or why hearing about it on the radio would lead the narrator to give her signed copy of Freedom up for adoption. In general, I read through these things pretty quickly, the way I imagine a reader reading online might read. Looking at it quickly again (ie, very much unlike a typical online reader) I sort of think that an element may be missing? Brevity can work well as long as things are clear enough to project unwritten texts in a reader's mind, right? With this, things were a bit foggy, although I liked its current elements, particularly the bits about overvaluing books, which is something way up our alley. Anyway, thanks for sending this and sorry and good luck and send more whenever.

Thanks for sending this. RISD is a great school and for a fraction of the tuition you can later live in a not-quite-gentrifying neighborhood of a major northeastern city and drive around in an old pickup with a dog in the passenger seat. You can be very handy and wear a worn canvas jacket. You can definitely be bearded but nevertheless delicate in terms of facial features. In some far-flung garage you can work on your sculptures on weekend nights. You stop drinking. Women love you but you're saving yourself for someone once you're older. This makes women love you more. But you have your dog and your art and your pickup truck. When you turn fifty years old, you consider your existential apprenticeship finally over. You stop doing carpentry work on the side and sell your sculptures and release yourself into life. Or maybe you currently study something other than scuplture and this little dream of mine is totally off. Lord knows. Eyeshot tends not to post stories involving children. It's just the way things go. If the narrator is 50+ and looking back at his youth, that's Proustian and cool and all, and maybe there are other instances where we'd be willing to post something involving kids, but it'd probably have to be pretty crazed like The Notebook by Agota Kristof. Also, "the black running beneath him" momentarily stopped me as I read since, for a crucial split second, I read running as a noun, not a verb, modified by black. Anyway, thanks for sending this and sorry and good luck!

THAT PREORDER LINK AGAIN