Famously Rejected

plath cakeSo yes, we all probably know that Sylvia Plath killed herself by sticking her head in an oven. But did you know her favorite thing to bake was a classic tomato soup cake with cream cheese frosting? (Bake at 350 degrees for one hour)

 

Perhaps you know that Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 was originally titled Catch-18, but because a World War II novel by Leon Uris called Mila 18 recently came out, and in order to avoid reader confusion, Heller went with Catch-22. But, before Heller even got to the point in which he had to decide on the final title of his novel, he had to experience getting a rejection letter in which the editor stated, “I haven’t the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say. Apparently the author intends it to be funny.”

 

mitchell

Louisa May Alcott is a bad ass, because even though one publisher rejected Little Women and told her to “stick to teaching,” she still went for it. And what’s happening 140 years after it was published? It’s still selling millions.

 

Random word fact for the day: People used to use “thon,” which is the third-person singular for “that one.” Gender ambiguities be damned! I’m bringing this one back.

 

Gone with the Wind has thus far sold 30 million copies. Thankfully, Margaret Mitchell is quite tenacious as the novel was rejected 38 times before a publisher picked it up.

 

And, for all you novelists out there, here’s a quick list of famous rejected novels so you don’t feel so bad about yourself:

  • A Wrinkle in Time: Madeleine L’Engle received 26 rejections, yet won the 1963 Newbery Medal.
  • Dubliners: 22 rejections. Plus, for its first year it only sold 379 copies, 120 of which James Joyce bought himself.
  • Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Rober M Prisig holds the Guinness Book of Records for the most rejections of a book: 121. Current status of book: best-seller.

 

Stephen King wrote under the name Richard Bachman so he could prove to the world that a horror author could write more than one book a year and still be taken seriously.

 

Gotta love Gertrude Stein. Not only did she sardonically declare in 1934 that Adolf Hitler should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She also named her cat Hitler. What a lady.

parker

 

And for the no way fact of the day: Dorothy Parker published a short story in The New Yorker called “Lolita” three weeks before that other Lolita came out. Weird, right? What’s freaky is that Parker’s story was about an old man, a teenager, and a jealous mother. Hmmmm.

 

If you did not know that “Frankenstein” refers to the scientist and not the monster, then go read that book again. What’s not as well known, though, is that Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein after she and her soon-to-be hubby, Percy, visited Lord Byron in Switzerland, and as they read German horror stories translated into French during that trip Byron challenged them all to write their own supernatural tale. And that is how Frankenstein was born.

 

And finally: you’re not too special if you know that Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in three weeks on a continuous sheet of paper. However, only the special ones know that the Navy rejected him because he was mentally unstable. Yes, leave it to the crazies to create something famous.

 

kerouac mug shot

 

 


 Chelsey Clammer received her MA in Women’s Studies from Loyola University Chicago, and is currently enrolled in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program. She has been published in The Rumpus, Atticus Review, and The Coachella Review among many others, and has an essay forthcoming in the South Loop Review. She is an award-winning and Pushcart Prize nominee essayist. Clammer is the Managing Editor and Nonfiction Editor for The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, as well as a columnist and workshop instructor for the journal. She is also the Nonfiction Editor for The Dying Goose. Her first collection of essays, There is Nothing Else to See Here, is forthcoming from The Lit Pub, Fall 2014. You can read more of her writing at: www.chelseyclammer.com.


 

The Rue de Fleurus Salon and Reading Series with Rick Moody | Inaugural Washington D.C. and Baltimore Series Launch on Thursday, June 27, 2013

Rue de Fleurus Rick Moody Slider II

The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, a literary and arts journal housed at The Johns Hopkins University, M. A. in Writing Program, is pleased to announce our new Rue de Fleurus Salon and Reading Series. Our debut event will be on Thursday, June 27th, 2013 at the Washington D. C. Campus off Dupont Circle. Our featured reader will be Rick Moody. Free and open to the public.

The Rue de Fleurus Salon and Reading Series with Rick Moody

VENUE CHANGE

The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, a Literary & Arts Journal Housed at The Johns Hopkins University, M. A. in Writing Program
is pleased to announce we will hold our Rue de Fleurus Salon at

Foundry Gallery

1314 18th Street, NW, Washington DC, 20036

(One Minute Walk from the DC Hopkins Campus off Dupont Circle)

Dupont Circle Map, Hopkins Campus, Foundry Gallery, Parking, Hotel, Local Eats

7:30 PM

Free and open to the public, wine and light food will be served

Please RSVP

 

Rick MoodyBorn in New York City, Rick Moody attended Brown and Columbia universities. His first novel, Garden State, was the winner of the 1991 Editor’s Choice Award from the Pushcart Press and was published in 1992. The Ice Storm was published in May 1994 by Little, Brown and Company. A film version, directed by Ang Lee, released by Fox Searchlight in 1997 and won best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. His collection of short fiction, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven was also published by Little, Brown, the title story winning the Aga Khan Award from The Paris Review. He has received the Addison Metcalf Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. His memoir The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions won the NAMI/Ken Book Award, and the PEN Martha Albrand prize. The Diviners won the Mary Shelley Award from the Media Ecology Association. His new novel, The Four Fingers of Death, was published in 2010. His short fiction and journalism have been anthologized in Best American Stories 2001, Best American Essays 2004, Best American Essays 2008, Year’s Best Science Fiction #9, Year’s Best Fantasy, and, multiply, in the Pushcart Prize anthology. His radio pieces have appeared on The Next Big Thing, Re:Sound, Weekend America, Morning Edition, and at the Third Coast International Audio Festival. He is also a musician. His album Rick Moody and One Ring Zero released in 2004. As part of The Wingdale Community Singers he plays and writes lyrics. They have released two albums, the most recent of which is Spirit Duplicator (2009). He has taught and lectured at NYU, Bennington, Yale, and the New School. He will be guest-lecturing this summer at The Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

richard peabody 1976Richard Peabody is the author of a novella, three short story collections, and seven poetry books. He is a native Washingtonian and teaches fiction writing at Johns Hopkins University, where he received the Faculty Awards for Distinguished Professional Achievement and Teaching Excellence. He is also the Beyond the Margins Above and Beyond 2013 Award winner for his outstanding service to the Washington, D.C. literary community, and he is Eckleburg‘s Patron Saint of Indie. He is the founder and co-editor of Gargoyle Magazine and editor of twenty-one anthologies including Mondo Barbie. His collection of short stories, Blue Suburban Skies, is out from  Main Street Rag Press. Read “Maraschino Cherries,” an excerpt from his collection, Speed Enforced by Aircraft (The Broadkill River Press, 2012).

Something Happened by Chas SchroederChas Schroeder’s body of work explores the intersection of pastoral, urban, and ultimately diaristic sentiments. Employing mixed media and text to reveal the aesthetic possibility inherent in subjects ranging from game animals to misogyny to advertising to colonialism to love, no subject is out of the range of his sincere and deeply curious toying. His signature style is marked by the purposeful use of acrylics, wood, found objects, vibrant spray, stencil work, collage, street techniques and perversely rendered figures (both animal and human) in a fashion that seems to address the anxieties and wonders of modern American life in it’s most exuberant forms.

LibreChap1Tim Wendel is the author of Summer of ’68 (Da Capo), Top 10 choice by Publisher’s Weekly. High Heat was a New York Times editor’s choice. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Weekend, Washingtonian, National Geographic Traveler, Huffington Post, GQ and Esquire. He teaches at The Johns Hopkins University, M. A. in Writing Program where he is a writer in residence.

moustache Annie Terrazzo has been creating mixed media and trash portraiture for almost 10 years and has sold over 400 works in that time. “Detritus”, Annie’s recent artistic endeavour and is made completely out of newspapers and vintage magazines from around the world. Originally from Colorado, she studied art with her family of jewelers and plein air artists and then moved on to study graphic design and portraiture in San Francisco. Since then, she has devoted her time to capturing the current depreciation of newspapers and found paper, making fun of it, and preserving them. Annie travels the world collecting newspapers and doing exhibitions, but Los Angeles will always be her home.

craveKareem Rizk, born in Australia, is a collage artist, illustrator and designer, currently living and working in Copenhagen, Denmark. Media include collage, acrylic, oil pastel, pencil, solvent transfers and acrylic transfers. The work is highly textured and often multi-layered with a nostalgic and weathered quality. Exhibitions include solo shows and group shows in Australia, US, Canada, UK and Europe. Rizk’s work has been published in numerous art magazines and books and his work is held in private collections worldwide.

Peter Cardamone A Ride Through BaltimorePeter Cardamone is a Baltimore-based writer and artist working in intermedia and film. “I always think that poems can fall easily into the cracks of movies where they just show the world around the characters whether beautiful or despondent and that is why Baltimore is the perfect place to film.”

DanaLittle-So_Shadows_Speak-so_shadows_speakDana Little currently lives (and, incidentally, writes and creates) in one of Baltimore’s basement apartments that features exposed piping and black mold.

NicoleIdar-_The_Green_Parakeet's_Tale_-page_10_shot_92-103 Nicole Idar, author of “The Green Parakeet’s Tale,” is a Malaysian writer now based in Washington DC. She is the recipient of a Cafritz Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and an Undiscovered Voices Fellowship from the Writer’s Center in Maryland, and is the founder of Asian Arts Live, a new reading and performance series that will debut in DC in the fall.

Amir_Shahlan_Amiruddin-The_Green_Parakeets TaleAmir Shahlan Amiruddin, illustrator of “The Green Parakeet’s Tale,” is a new media artist and founder and Creative Director of One Eye Fish Studio, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Amir’s first animated short film “Tanggang” won first prize in the Best Animated Short Mixed Media category at the 2011 Lumiere Digitale Animation Festival in Pune, India.

Michael_Shattuck-Charlie_Devoured_ReducMichael Shattuck is a Baltimore City native and currently resides there. His work has appeared in Short, Fast, and Deadly and Outside In Lit & Travel.

Lisa_AnnDulin-No_Sweet_Songbird-bio_pic_bwL. Ann Dulin is a Midwestern-bred writer living in Baltimore with aspirations to short film and audio media, and a drive to explore taboo.

Disembodied V MediumRae Bryant is a writer and intermedia artist working in photography, collage and film. Her work has been exhibited in Washington DC and New York. Her short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals, released from Patasola Press in 2011. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney’s, BLIP Magazine, Gargoyle Magazine, and Redivider, among other publications and have been nominated for the Pen/Hemingway, Pen Emerging Writers, and Pushcart awards. She earned a Masters in Writing from Hopkins and has taught in the writing program as well as the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa.  She is represented by Jennifer Carlson with Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency.

punkrockmatt

D. J. Uncle Matt was born and raised in L.A., where his mother, Dominatrix Sheree Rose, introduced him to the Punk scene and L.A. music and arts scene. Matt studied film at the University of Oregon and in Barcelona, where he taught English and lived the expatriate life. He has written, produced, filmed and/or directed feature films, shorts, music videos, and worked as assistant camera on Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, a Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, and L.A. Film Festival awards winning documentary. Matt lives in Washington D.C., where he is a filmmaker/screenwriter and hosts the bi-weekly radio show, Uncle Matt’s Two-Hour Shower.

 

& MORE….

 

 

Rue de Fleurus Salon and Reading Series

The Rue de Fleurus Salon and Reading Series takes its name from Gertrude Stein’s famous Paris residence where she conducted her expatriate salon including luminaries such as Fitzgerald, Joyce, Hemingway, Matisse and Picasso.