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."
Yes, exactly. That was my point, too.
But what was trying to emphasise was that some editors can't see something that will make them rich right in front of their noses. Individual taste needs to share quality time with an understanding of what's likely to sell.
Sucks if you aren't a commercial writer, though. As I know...
