Famous authors, their writings and their rejection letters.
- Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.
- Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.
- Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.
- Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.
- Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.
- 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.
- Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)
- H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.
- Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.
- Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…
- Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.
- William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!
- Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.
- Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.
- George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.
- Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.
- Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.
- The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.
- Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.
- John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times.
- Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) received 134 rejections.
- Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) received 121 rejections.
- Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.
- Judy Blume, beloved by children everywhere, received rejections for two straight years.
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle received 26 rejections.
- Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times.
- Carrie by Stephen King received 30 rejections.
- The Diary of Anne Frank received 16 rejections.
- Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rolling was rejected 12 times.
- Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection letters
How come Ryan Reynolds can go around pretty much pretending he’s Deadpool all the time and Marvel come out with the movie and no one makes fun of it, and thinks it’s great but Jared Leto does some crazy stuff to try and get in character for a role he’s super excited about and having fun and it becomes a meme and he’s trying to be “edgy”?
Because Ryan Reynolds didn’t send his co-stars used condoms and dead animals.
Jared Leto is a rapist that probably has a lot to do with it too
More prosaically, Reynolds isn’t the first actor to play Deadpool following an Oscar-winning performance the psychological intensity of which was almost certainly a contributing factor in the star’s death.
And where Reynolds is playing it for comedy, Leto (or at least the marketing around Suicide Squad) very much is trying to be ‘edgy’.
Plus Mark Hamill is still playing the Joker, and being very normal while doing so.
I do feel like it should be said that Ledger wasn’t even working on Batman when he died. It was a different project entirely, and his overdose was likely accidental carelessness owing to multiple doctors in different cities or areas prescribing him different medications that shouldn’t have been taken together, because if you’re rich enough you can wander into a doctor’s office and go “I have X issue, nothing I’m doing is managing it properly, give me something for it”, and they’ll just take your word for it. So Health Ledger’s death probably has only a little bit to do with Dark Knight (or not at all) and a LOT more to do with his well-known issues with anxiety and depression, which he’d admittedly struggled with long before Batman. The people who worked with him on Batman have never said much about him seeming “disturbed” or otherwise bothered by the role out of character, and was even one of the nicer and more upbeat people on set. The only people who have implied that the Joker pushed him toward a mental breakdown were people writing speculative articles, fans who wanted a satisfying reason for his death, and… Jack Nicholson, who was already bitter before Ledger died that he didn’t call Nicholson for advice on how to play the character, because Nicholson owns the Joker, apparently.
So Leto is capitalizing on this “it’ll make you KUH-RAZY” thing that isn’t actually a thing (because, like storywonker said, Hamill’s been doing it forever and a day with a much more manic persona for the character and is fine) and is passively perpetuating a lie about a man who, in life, was an intensely private person. Leto is trying to out-Joker Ledger by being an unprofessional dipshit who harasses his coworkers when his competition isn’t even alive. Assnugget.
Also, Ryan Reynolds understands how humor works. How he plays up Deadpool is entirely comedic. It’s good-natured and laugh-with-me (and laugh-AT-me) rather than inviting an audience to laugh at other people once he’s purposely made them uncomfortable. Leto sent someone a dead rat; Reynolds told some jokes with a few kids dressed as X-Men who were in on it. Leto is trying to ~comment on society~ with his ~edginess~ in one of those “isn’t it hilarious that people have POSITIVE FEELINGS ABOUT ANYTHING ahahaha”; Reynolds shitposts on Twitter.
People DO make fun of Ryan Reynolds. The difference is that Reynolds is in on YOUR JOKE because he started it, so it’s in good fun even if you genuinely dislike him. Leto is mistaking unfunny miscondect for quirk and edge. People are making fun of Leto because Leto isn’t in on the joke that is his behavior, so he won’t – and can’t – roll with it and make it genuinely entertaining like Reynolds does.
boom there it is