Letter to a Slush-Pile Reader
Editor of Great Literary Importance Magazine of Great Literary Importance New York, NY 10036
Dear Editor-who-will-never-see-this-letter: Enclosed please find my manuscript for your consideration. Per your instructions, I have enclosed three copies on 20 pound paper, which should account for the heft of the envelope. I have used the medium clips, as you requested, as opposed to normal paper clips, which would have saved me $.17. I have formatted my submission to Garamond 11.5 and 1.12 inch margins, as your guidelines made clear. Thus, you should have no trouble reading what I have sent you. To be honest, I am not quite sure why I went to this trouble. After all, I know that no editor will ever read this letter or my submission, as I have been shunted to the slush pile where you now find me. I have to admit that I do at least have pity for your situation. You attended some brand name college, Ivy or Seven Sisters or Berkeley or some such school that cost your parents more money than I’ll ever see from either my writing or my day job writing ad copy with numerous bad puns (perhaps you’ve seen my ad for Valencia Orange Juice: “It’ll beat poor health to a pulp”?). Then again, perhaps you received full scholarships to college and didn’t have to work in a fast food restaurant and try to read Shakespeare while operating a glorified Fry Daddy. The Bard would not appreciate the grease stains on Hamlet, but, then again, it’s just “words, words, words.” However, at least you have a job that somehow relates to literature, though I’m not quite sure that you actually spend your time reading the manuscripts. Come on, we’ve all heard the stories about slush pile readers having a stack of submissions to read through at five minutes before lunch, only to tell their friends they’ll only be a minute or two late, and they actually arrive early. What’s truly puzzling, then, is why it takes almost a year to hear back from you when I send you my writing. Do you simply wait until you get a stack that will actually take more than a few minutes, then read them all at once or do you pace yourself, only reading one a day, hoping to convince your superiors that your job is actually necessary? While we’re being honest, let’s just admit that, not only do you not read what we write, no one else does either. We submit to journals we’ve never heard of, more or less read, all in the hopes of getting enough publication credits to swing a book deal, which might, if we’re lucky, get us a job teaching one class of creative writing, with four courses of composition, at the local community college. And if the writers aren’t reading the magazines and journals, who is? It’s not like the American populace is beating down the door wondering when the next new essay or poem is coming out. Of course, we know why we do it. We do it for the love of literature. When you were president of the English Honor Society at Brown or wherever, you quoted Shelley’s “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” while I quoted the Chinese proverb, “They had no poets, and so they died.” You believed that “literature is news that stays news,” while I argued that “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” We felt that literature could change the world, as it had already changed our lives. That’s why you share a cramped flat with three other wannabe publishers, and I debase myself and degrade the English language in the name of commerce. OK, the reality is that we want to be famous, and we knew we weren’t going to get there any other way. It’s not like we have any musical or athletic ability, and we’re not particularly stunning when it comes to looks, either. You edited the literary magazine in college, and I attended every open mic night in the area, all while sneering at the Greeks, with their initiations and keg parties and matching shirts with clever nicknames on them. All the while, we wanted their abs, their breasts, their biceps, but most of all their self-assurance, that everyone in the world was waiting to take care of them, while we sat in the corner drinking our coffee (before it was cool), talking about angst and Schadenfreude. Either way, you understand what it means to suffer for your art, and I’m sure you’ll appreciate a break from the true slush. Thus, I’ve enclosed the first twenty poems of my epic cycle on vampires (not using the Stoker mythology, of course--what a poser). I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely, An Up-and-Coming Writer/Former Ad Copywriter
Kevin Brown is an Associate Professor at Lee University and an MFA student at Murray State University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters, Connecticut Review, South Carolina Review, Stickman Review, Atlanta Review, and Palimpsest, among other journals. He has also published essays in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academe, InsideHigherEd.com, The Teaching Professor, and Eclectica. He has one book of poetry, Exit Lines (Plain View Press, 2009), a forthcoming chapbook, Abecedarium (Finishing Line Press), and a forthcoming book of scholarship: They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.
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