When it comes from The Paris Review, apparently.
Here’s the short version of the story–Daniel Nester fills it out a bit at WWAATD (part I, part II, part III): The Paris Review accepted a bunch of work. There was a change in the editorial staff, and the new editors decided that some of the work selected for publication wasn’t Paris Review quality, I assume. Out go the un-acceptance emails.
I’ve never written one of those emails, and I hope I never will. I’d hope that if I found myself in the position of an editor taking over a situation where there’s work in the pipeline that I’d honor the decisions of the previous editor(s), even if I disagreed with them, and I’d do it because I’m a writer first and foremost, and if an editor did that to me, I’d be looking for a way to exact some revenge. As Nester points out, The Paris Review is “an anchor store publication credit in the shopping mall of a book’s acknowledgments page, one of the first that would be mentioned in a short and essential writerly bio.” We can argue whether or not that reputation is still deserved but it’s a major publication. It’s a reputation-builder.
To have that snatched away would be painful, to say the least. Those kinds of acceptances mean way more to the writer than they do to the magazine, or the editor, and to un-accept a piece in this way strikes me as unnecessarily cruel. Rejections are a way of life for writers; we grow inured to them over time, classify them as to their coldness, learn to interpret the euphemisms editors invent to hide the severity of their no’s. This is different. This is insulting, both for the writer and the previous editor(s). And for what? So the new editor can publish, in his words, “a ‘holy shit’ poetry section for his first issue on September 15.” Seems to me Lorin Stein just made that impossible.
Update: Nester has added Part III.
Upadte II: Nester has added Part IV.
35 responses
I am sure that in those days when people did not have to argue whether Paris Review deserved its reputation or not, this would not have happened.
It IS cruel to send the emails to those writers who probably cried tears of joy when they thought they jumped that all important first hurdle to a published life.
Unnecessarily so.
This hurts those writers. Can’t see how it helps Paris Review.
This is deeply shocking. As someone who has a fiction submission pending to the Paris Review, I am fully expecting a rejection any day now, which is fine – but I can almost feel the pain and anger of receiving an acceptance and then to have that taken away. Unbelievable! Disgusting, frankly, whatever praiseworthy words of admiration they couch it in. Daniel, I am so sorry to hear this, best of luck with your future submissions. Aim even higher!
This is unspeakably nasty. “Holy shit?” Well, the second word gets it right.
The Paris Review should apologize and publish the rejected work.
And send the new editor to the unemployment line.
What really bothers me about this is the amount of time lost. If I’m not mistaken, The Paris Review doesn’t even accept simultaneous submissions – and of course, has a long turnaround time – which means not only did the poets in question go through the normal waiting to hear back period, but an additional period of several months (a year, even?) of expecting to see their work in TPR. Time which could have been spent submitting that work to other magazines. Rejection is disappointing enough on its own – coupled with resentment, that’s a pretty successful alienation of people who admired and aspired to contribute to the magazine. What a complete lack of regard for the poets and what they invest when they send in their work.
Paris Review actually does accept simultaneous submissions, which I think might make the sting even worse–not only are they not going to publish the work they’ve accepted. Those writers withdrew it from other places that might have taken it, and ended up removing those opportunities as well. Really low-class move on their part.
I am constantly amazed at how badly writers are treated by publication that rely on them for content – but this is really wrong.
McSweeney’s did this to a bunch of people during the diorama issue, too, but they did it just because they had to cut pages. They didn’t even have the excuse of changing editors. Is that okay? Or maybe it’s just time for all these mags to start treating their authors better?
Nester has added Part 3.
Jason – Thanks for the clarification. And when you put it that way, in terms of withdrawn work, that’s definitely worse!
You guys realize this kind of thing happens to non-fiction, book deals and other things all the time, right?
If you read Nester’s pieces, you see he acknowledges that, and also points out how it’s not the same as reneging on a poem acceptance.
I find his argument fairly uncompelling. The only real difference between having an essay pulled from a lit mag and a poem is that the former is more common. One might argue that having a non-fiction work pulled is actually worse, as you are far less likely to be able to use it elsewhere (it may be time-sensitive or theme-specific, etc.)
I think The Paris Review handled this poorly and could have thought up some better solution. The poet on Nester’s blog suggests publishing the poems on the paris review blog, which makes sense. But I fail to see why this is an epic tragedy while no one would bat an eye if a non-fiction piece was cut from The Paris Review.
Uh, what? If the new editors of a quarterly don’t feel like spending an entire issue cleaning house before they can take over full-force, that’s their prerogative. There’s no ethical dilemma here unless there is some kind of breach of contract. Thinking about this from an ethical standpoint isn’t just groundless, it’s boring. More interesting as something for the un-accepted writers to experience/respond to than as some kind of rallying point. Why so angry, people? The work didn’t die, it’s just not going to be a part of a lagging quarterly’s next issue.
I’m with Will on this. If the job of the Paris Review is to help writers feel good about themselves, then they definitely blew it. However, as I see it, their job is to put out the best magazine they can. If they were filmmakers, and an actor (or lighting guy or editor) turned out not to be right for the project after all, then most people would say they were well within their rights to fire that actor (or whatever) and bring in someone else, for the good of the film as a whole. Yes, it would hurt that actor’s feelings terribly and that sucks, but it also comes with the territory of the profession. I’d be surprised if anyone reading the Rumpus would instead argue, “No, they should keep that actor on, even if he’s wrong for the film, because it would be too cruel to fire him.”
If, on the other hand, you believe that the first duty of a literary journal is to minister to aspiring writers regardless of whether or not the editors consider their work worthwhile, then you’re talking about a whole different kind of enterprise. In that case, perhaps the writers who are the most fragile or easily discouraged and depressed should get preferential treatment? Whatever alternative standards might be applied, it would soon become obvious in the results, and what reputation the PR currently enjoys would melt away.
Can’t you guys see the paradox here? Publication is only a meaningful endorsement if it’s an indication of the editors’ genuine literary respect AND ONLY THAT. Once a journal starts publishing writers because they feel sorry for them, publication in that journal becomes meaningless and there’s no reason to place so much value (and your own ego) on it.
If the un-accepted writers are offended (can’t say I blame them), then they’re free to withhold their work from the PR in the future, but since the PR doesn’t seem to be into their work to begin with, it probably won’t cramp their style much.
Laurene and Will, the problem, I think, if you want to look at it from purely a business standpoint, is that the The Paris Review’s main client is writers. How many non-writers do you know who read literary journals? So Laurene’s metaphor would only work if the only people who were going to watch that movie were members of SAG. In which case, publicly screwing over that actor, unless he were really unpopular, wouldn’t be the best business move. So really, because their client base is the same people who create their content, they’ve screwed themselves over by doing this. It just wasn’t a smart move.
I feel bad for all the people this happened to, but I am also laughing a little–I don’t think this is anything new. About ten years ago, when George Plimpton was still the editor, the Paris Review accepted one of my short stories. I received periodic communications from them, and they told me that my story would appear in the next issue. But then I started getting scarier emails, that said, “George Plimpton has your story with him in the Hamptons, and he’s making some edits.” Finally, I got an email that said, something like, “George Plimpton couldn’t save your story.” They did send me a check with a “kill fee” of $100, which I thought about not cashing out of pride, but hey, I needed the money. I told my sob story to my friend and teacher, the late writer Lucia Berlin, and she said the Paris Review had done the same thing to her about thirty years earlier! I took it pretty hard–I was 23 at the time and didn’t know that these things happen all the time. (I’ve since had similar acceptance/rejections from other literary magazines.) But I’m over it now, and can laugh about it. It’s pretty cool to think that George Plimpton was actually reading and editing a story of mine, even though it didn’t work out.
I’d still dearly love to have something published by the Paris Review. I still submit there, and I’ll continue to take my chances. My guess is everyone else will too.
Just to add to what Seth said, what the new editors did by dumping work that had already been accepted was violate an agreement. Now they’re legally able to violate that agreement, as no contracts had been signed, but that doesn’t change the fact that their conduct has screwed over a number of writers who had already been deemed good enough to appear in the journal.
How about this as a compromise: any journal that feels this is an ethical practice can put in their submission guidelines that they reserve the right to change their mind on your work even after acceptance. At least that way the writer knows what he or she is getting into.
I disagree, Seth. The Paris Review’s intended audience obviously includes writers and may, yes, in the current market, consist mainly of them (although I think that point is probably disputable, and in the review’s past, wrong – indicative, I think, of the need for something new, not a reason to maintain the status quo). But there’s no public “screwing over” here, not on the scale you’re implying.. it’s an editorial decision. As others have noted, articles and fiction get pulled all the time.
I guess my issue here is that although I sympathize with the writers who had their work pulled, I think it’s rough to criticize a print publication still struggling to stay afloat in the current market for wanting to exercise uninhibited creative control over their product. If you were a fashion magazine editor publishing your first issue after the departure of the previous editor, and you wanted to do all an all black issue, you wouldn’t include the red dress they liked, even if it was a cool piece of gear.
Not on anybody’s side; PR will look pretty silly if their next issue isn’t killer after all this. But if it demonstrates that thanks to a new editorial staff, they are moving in a strong new direction that actually does “kick ass”, writers will still want to send them work.
I think sometimes we’re so repulsed by the idea that we might be associated with the victims, we rationalize the behavior of the victimizers.
1. There is a breach of contract here: a person acts in good faith and believes the email accepting the work (acting on that information in any number of ways: talking about it, withdrawing submissions from other magazines, adding it as a “forthcoming” to a bio or CV). An email contract carries more weight than a verbal contract, and a verbal contract is real.
2. It is customary for new editors coming in to respect the work done by their predecessors. A friend of mine published her first issue (as poetry editor) of a nationally-recognized magazine with only 10% selected by her, the other 90% selected by a predecessor whose aesthetic she passionately disagreed with; but to do otherwise would be foul and odious behavior).
3. (Sorry for the break) There is a difference between external problems forcing the magazine to cut things (a change in funding or format leading to the loss of pages, for example) and in those cases, the magazines should explain themselves. Everyone knows the world isn’t perfect and nothing ever goes quite to plan. But to just decide to dump a bunch of poems that have already been accepted because you like other poems better, of your own volition, without any external force of practicality demanding such a drastic action shows tremendous disrespect for everyone involved in the process. And disrespect merits disrespect in turn. Crap on other people, expect to be crapped on: that’s life.
What Amy said.
Also, Will, if you read Nester’s pieces, there’s discussion of lots of options for them to be more decent about it, even if they didn’t run it in print. They could’ve put it on a web site. They could have had a special run. They could’ve done a million things to not alienate people and get all this bad press. But instead they just end up looking like they don’t care about writers, who are, like it or not, their main customer at the moment. It just made them look kind of arrogant, at a time when the Internet is making it more and more important to appear, at least, accessible to everyone. You know?
Who cares? The Paris Review publishes their ex-interns. Just another incest fest.
“2. It is customary for new editors coming in to respect the work done by their predecessors. A friend of mine published her first issue (as poetry editor) of a nationally-recognized magazine with only 10% selected by her, the other 90% selected by a predecessor whose aesthetic she passionately disagreed with; but to do otherwise would be foul and odious behavior).”
It is fair to note, I think, that according to Stein over a year’s worth of poetry was backlogged. So these new editors wouldn’t be able to put any poetry they wanted, not even 10%, for the next four issues.
I think this is a complicated issue. On one hand, as a writer I totally sympathize with people feeling awful about this and I know that I’d probably die if I’d gotten into TPR and then gotten my piece pulled. Of course, I’m a struggling starting writer, not an established writer like I assume most of the poets being unaccepted. On the flip side, as an editor I can’t imagine getting an editing job and not being able to do my job for several issues. If I didn’t like the work, I wouldn’t want my name attached to it.
And I must say I do think it is odd that, as others noted above, non-fiction routinely gets killed and it isn’t unheard of for stories to be unaccepted. What about poetry makes it unacceptable to be pulled if it is acceptable to pull other pieces?
Also, I disagree that there are no external pressures here, as Amy suggests. Lorin Stein was hired with plenty of buzz and noise and a mission to redo the journal, to make it more relevant and exciting again. He and his staff are, I assume, under plenty of pressure to make their mark and enact their vision. You can’t really hire someone to relaunch your journal and then tell them they can’t do much for the next few issues and by the time they can, most people will have forgotten.
I DO think they could have found a solution, such as a special web section, that would have worked for everyone. But I can understand why editors would want to edit.
I do, I think you’re right. My initial comment was more in knee-jerk reaction to statements in this write up like “Seems to me Lorin Stein just made that impossible,” which are over the top, and a boring way of looking at this. Definitely don’t feel the need to make the PR staff out to be shining stars.
As a final thought, whatever, I like Jenny’s comment a lot. Want to see more of that, want more friends who know how to think about writing and publication like that – aw man, rough, cool story, writing’s funny, so much anguish, 23, la la la, Harold Plimpton, have a beer, and keep moving, because I love it. More ‘constructive’ than diving straight for the ethical disaster lever or talking about clients and “reputation builders”. Cool.
Will, I totally agree with you about the client and reputation builder thing. I was totally in day job mode. I also think I need to stop spending so much damn time on the Internet.
Oh man I am so with you there
Hmmm. Well, if you edit a literary review with the mentality that the only people who are going to read it are the writers who hope to get published in it, then it’s no surprise that literary journals aren’t much read. I don’t read high school newspapers for very similar reasons.
Actually, if the new regime at the PR is breaking ranks by behaving as if they intend to address themselves to the interests of a wider audience, they might even start to matter again. This dust-up is kinda giving me hope.
Besides, from what I hear, most of the writers who submit to literary journals don’t buy or read them themselves, so you have to wonder of the editors have anything to lose.
Laurene and Will, the problem, I think, if you want to look at it from purely a business standpoint, is that the The Paris Review’s main client is writers. How many non-writers do you know who read literary journals? So Laurene’s metaphor would only work if the only people who were going to watch that movie were members of SAG. In which case, publicly screwing over that actor, unless he were really unpopular, wouldn’t be the best business move. So really, because their client base is the same people who create their content, they’ve screwed themselves over by doing this. It just wasn’t a smart move.
Seth: I think you’re making a few not-entirely-founded assumptions about the Paris Review’s subscriber base in stating that this is a bad business decision. For one, the Paris Review is, as far as highbrow lit-based publications go, fairly mainstream — outside of the New Yorker, it’s probably the most well-known journal. While smaller, more obscure publications are likely to be read exclusively by fellow writers, that’s probably not the case for the PR — in fact, I know a good deal of people who aren’t fiction writers or poets (or writers at all, for that matter) who read it, myself included. Further, as others have pointed out, killing previously accepted submissions is a relatively common practice for fiction (and incredibly common in non-fiction and journalism) so in all likelihood, the only people for whom this is a true scandal are poets.
You’re also assuming that the subscriber-base and the submitters are one and the same. In response to last week’s lit-mag brouhaha (Tin House’s new policy requiring all submissions to be accompanied by a receipt proving that the writer has bought a book at a bookstore at some point in his/her life) Andy Hunter of Electric Literature posted a comment (which can be read here in its entirety if anyone hasn’t already seen it: http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/?p=16635) stating: “For about 4 months, EL offered $6 off subscriptions to writers who submitted work to us, via a coupon code. It brought the cost of a digital subscription down to $3 an issue. Out of over 3,000 submitters during that time, less than a dozen used that code.” Before stating that this is a terrible business decision, it might be worthwhile to ask how many of the poets whose work was un-accepted are actually subscribers (same goes for the people who are commenting about how they’re going to boycott the PR.)
All that aside, you’re also assuming that the PR lets business decisions guide its editorial policy — does anyone want to read a magazine like that, especially a literary journal? I don’t. I’m not trying to argue that this is something magazines should be doing regularly — if the Paris Review makes a habit of dumping accepted work en masse, I might reconsider my position. There were probably more elegant ways of handling the situation, but maybe not — we have no idea how many poems we’re actually talking about, nor their quality. The poets in question absolutely have reason to be upset and disappointed, but big masthead changes are always going to involve working out some kinks. As others have stated, this wasn’t just a couple of poems that could have been squeezed in elsewhere — it’s a year’s worth. It’s senseless to hire new editors without letting them exercise any editorial judgment.
I will fully admit to the fact that I just got told about the business model thing. I really should never talk about business models. It never ends well.
On the other hand, this “it happens in fiction and nonfiction all the time” argument sounds to me like my boss saying “it is what it is” about me not getting a raise this year. The fact that something happens all the time doesn’t make it right. And by saying “it is what it is” or “that happens all the time,” what you’re really saying is “I don’t care enough about it to fight it.” But if writers and readers really wanted to change the system, they could, by refusing to work for certain places, or by not submitting to another en masse, or by refusing to visit a web site or purchase a publication.
I really need to step away from the Internet now.
It strikes me as relevant becuase of the hyperbolic tone some people are taking. I’m currently reading the latest Nester chapter of “the great paris review poetry purge” which is an interview with an unaccepted poet Michael Schiavo. Schiavo discusses the situation as if Lorin Stein were destroying the paris review’s history with this move and many other commentators have talked similarly, as if this was an almost unfathomable crime. But why is it such a crime to unaccept a poem but not to unaccept a story or an essay?
I also find it frankly bizarre how many people, including Shciavo, seem to look down at the concept of non-writers editing:
“But for the first time, The Paris Review is edited by someone who isn’t a writer — a creator, a maker, a namer — himself. That the poetry editor does not write poetry is also troubling. Bird-watchers, not birds.”
Why are these things troubling? Stein is being hired to edit, not to write (he is a bird-watcher being hired to bird-watch, to use his metaphor), and he has edited some of the best American fiction books over the past few years. If he can edit work in book from, what suggests he can’t edit work in magazine form?
Although again, they certainly could have handled it better.
Any satirical poets out there? Looks like a rich vein begging to be mined!
Lincoln, the issue with a non-writer editing is that the critics and academics get their say, and what writer is a fan of the critic?
I don’t think it’s fair to judge Mr. Stein’s ability to edit PR’s poetry on the basis of profession, as much as I have an innate bias against ‘bird-watchers’. But his public relations skills in the age of the interweb sure seem poor– my facebook is blowing up with writers, established and famous and nobodies– who all seem inclined to roast Mr. Stein alive over a slow fire. The point about all the other choices he could have made seem important– Terry Hummer’s take on it, as the former editor of the Kenyon Review, was that whenever an editor takes over a literary magazine there’s a substantial backlog of work to honor, and typically it’s the new editor’s job to find a way to do so. In that sense, Mr. Stein had a particularly difficult task: a year’s backlog, which as was pointed out here, would prevent him from substantively shaping the direction of the magazine for some time. Some blame ought to go to his predecessors. Yet even if this were genuine necessity– if the poems couldn’t have been worked in over a period of years, or included in some sort of house-cleaning issue or double-poetry issue– the way the move was executed was so ham-handed that Mr. Stein has done PR and his own reputation a great deal of harm.
I think Michael and Lincoln are both right, for what it is worth. These things have been done before, are the way of doing business—but they can, and I personally think should, be handled in the best way possible.
I recommend checking back on Jenny Shank’s informative, touching, and humorous story in the comments above about her own short story’s acceptance, and later rejection, by George Plimpton when it was still his Paris Review. I quote:
“I received periodic communications from them, and they told me that my story would appear in the next issue. But then I started getting scarier emails, that said, “George Plimpton has your story with him in the Hamptons, and he’s making some edits.†Finally, I got an email that said, something like, “George Plimpton couldn’t save your story.—
And she got a kill fee of $100, which is, I believe, the right way for a publication with the funding of The Paris Review to behave. The magazine and their foundation certainly have the money to pay a meager kill fee of $100 dollars to these poets.
I have no hard feelings to Paris Review about this, and will continue buying issues until the content goes bad, and perhaps even for a while after that. It would be nice to see them throw some cash these poets way for their time and effort in this matter. This is what I would like to see happen, so everyone (the magazine and the poets) can just move on.
It still seems to me like the easiest thing to do would have been to offer to publish these poems on their website.
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