This isn't the end I thought would come out today. But here it is.

He doesn’t say anything else...well, if he could speak.(Yes, on top of everything else, he had to feed his break-up spiel into a communication device to complain about my commitment problems.It’s like the guy giving the time doesn’t want to see me anymore...doesn’t think it’s Going Anywhere.) Years later, I finally think to say, in my head “You liked where it went last night!” and maybe “Fuck you,” because I had. This heathen was good for one for the road. And I didn’t even say “If I end up like your mother, I’m killing myself!” Because it isn’t Nice, and ugly girls always have to be Nice. Everyone agrees he’s a better person than I am. Even I do, maybe especially. He starts a new life, I get to ride the bus with profanity etched in the windows. Yesterday was Valentine’s Day.

From Ursula Le Guin's website, [link]

Dear Miss Kidd,

Ursula K. Le Guin writes extremely well, but I’m sorry to have to say that on the basis of that one highly distinguishing quality alone I cannot make you an offer for the novel. The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, eventually, unreadable. The whole is so dry and airless, so lacking in pace, that whatever drama and excitement the novel might have had is entirely dissipated by what does seem, a great deal of the time, to be extraneous material. My thanks nonetheless for having thought of us. The manuscript of The Left Hand of Darkness is returned herewith.

Yours sincerely,

The Editor

21 June, 1968

erika, wow. That hit hard. Nice.

re: le Guin, not erika

ie, not enough hot alien sex.

She's famous for that one, right?

That packs a gut-punch, erika.

She's famous for that one, right?

Some folks consider it one of the masterpieces of science fiction. t shamefully I've never read it. She's a bit of hard-going for my "blow stuff up!" preferences.

Thanks, Susan. Connie, I've only read pieces and parts... the closest I've gotten to SF in eons is "Gun, With Occasional Music" which is a hard-boiled mystery with genetically altered animals.

Damn, erika. Just - damn.

Betsy, I've never been able to get into Le Guin myself, partly because there are very few things in the genre that echo in me, and partly for the reasons cited in that particular rejection slip.

The difference is, had I been the editor, I would have bought and published LHoD in a heartbeat. She must have been out of her mind - it's extremely saleable.

The point of that one, to me, is that devastating rejection note does NOT mean either bad book or unsaleable book. Just means "not my taste, dear."