ŷ������

Perhaps the most famous rejection in literary history occurred when a French publisher told Marcel Proust he didn’t see why his hero needed 30 pages to describe how turned over in bed before he went to sleep. But there are many others that, in retrospect, look nearly as boneheaded.

Take the American publisher who rejected George Orwell’s Animal Farm because, supposedly, animal stories didn’t sell in the U.S. (and this was decades after Jack London’s blockbuster hit The Call of the Wild proved otherwise). Or the firm that turned down Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles with that default rebuff in England: “not quite suitable for us.��

At @Medium, great authors whom publishers once saw as turkeys. Happy Thanksgiving!

This week marks the beginning of the season for the year’s-best-books lists, and one you’re likely to see on many is Rachel Clarke’s “The Story of a Heart,�� the heartrending true story of a 9-year-old boy’s heart transplant, which occurred after a girl his age was mortally wounded in a car crash.

The story of how Keira’s heart ended up in Max’s body is dramatic in itself. But Clarke also gracefully weaves in background on the ethics, history, and logistics of organ donation, all of which helped to make her book a recent finalist for a £50,000 book award in Britain. If you’d like to know more, you’ll find a full review at my free and nonpaywalled Substack newsletter, Jansplaining:

Diana, the late Princess of Wales, has had a long afterlife at bookstores. Since her death 27 years ago, we’ve had memoirs by her butler, housekeeper, bodyguard, hairdresser, “alternative healer,�� and others. We’ve also had a raft of books by journalists, biographers, and royal hangers-on.

So I was skeptical when I heard about Anne Allan’s Dancing With Diana (Sutherland House, 2024), a new memoir by the Scottish dancer who gave the princess weekly ballet lessons for eight years. Allan says the experience helped to transform Shy Di into a graceful and confident “people’s princess.��

The teacher’s claim is hard to evaluate, given how many others advised Diana during those years. But her memoir is short and sweet and might fit the bill if you’re already thinking about potential holiday gifts for friends who love to dance or read about royals. Here’s .

As a critic, I’m used to hype from book publicists. It’s their job to sell books, and the best do it with as much integrity as their work allows.

What I’m not used to is that so many journalists now act like publicists, blurring the line between the two professions. The latest example involves Sally Rooney, the Irish novelist whose books include Conversations with Friends, Normal People, and the new Intermezzo.

Rooney is a blockbuster author who’s been called “the Taylor Swift of the book world.�� It’s fair for journalists to note that, as I’ve done from time to time. But to a degree I’ve rarely seen, many in the media have acted more like her publicists than like the press.

A recent case in point involves the editors of the New York Times. After a literary critic on another platform ventured a mild criticism of Rooney’s work, America’s newspaper of record ran a roughly one thousand word “guest essay�� (as it now calls op-ed pieces) called “Sally Rooney deserves better.��

What’s wrong with this picture? I say in a recent post on Jansplaining, my free Substack newsletter. I wish I could say we’re unlikely to see more like it on Rooney—though a backlash against the hype is growing–but in this case, there’s no end in sight.