2019-10-01_Writer_s_Digest

For our annual agent issue, we decided to bring back the ever-popular “Reject a Hit” column that used to

occupy this back page. WD editor Cassandra Lipp wrote this spoof rejection of one of her favorite stories,

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Caution: This letter contains spoilers.

August 11, 1995

Dear Mr. Paulanunchuk, (Have you thought of a pen name that might

be easier to spell?)

Frankly, we do not find your attempts to disturb us amusing. We are

... disturbed, to say the least, by your latest manuscript. The idea

of grown men being so frustrated that they must beat each other

up for no apparent reason is so atrocious that it makes me want to

punch someone in the face. Furthermore, if men are driven to start

their own underground society that they aren’t allowed to talk

about, then why bother writing a book about it?

Mr. Paulanunchuk, I believe you are actually a smart man, and that

you are squandering your potential by imagining an unnamed dis-

gruntled man going insane and forming another personality. Fight

Club seems like the incomprehensible rant that an insomniac might

write in the middle of the night. It is only a few words off from

the manuscript that Jack Torrance slaved over in The Shining.

Readers will find the story cheap and contrived. Are you suggest-

ing that half of the world’s population has another personality that

they are unaware of?

For these reasons, we must kindly put down Fight Club, Valley of the

Dogs style. To put it in the words of your horrifying protagonist,

your manuscript is the same decaying organic matter as the rest of

our slush pile. May we suggest taking your all-singing, all-dancing

crap of literature and turning it into a screenplay instead? Or

perhaps, this story may even work as a musical.

Signed,

R  t P   

Robert Paulson

W. W. Norton & Company

P.S. No one gets in the way of Project Mayhem.

72 I WRITER’S DIGEST I October 2019

POTPOURRIFORTHEPEN

An aromatic blend of writerly diversions.

REJECT A HIT