For the first time in 35 years, no Pulitzer Prize was awarded for fiction this year. The last time this happened, the Pulitzer jury had picked A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean, but the Pulitzer board turned down the selection.
Maclean had been rejected by many publishers as he struggled to publish his famous collection of short stories, including the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house. Letters of Note has published a scathing letter Maclean wrote to the publisher when they asked to see his next manuscript after his first book became a hit. Check it out:
You must have known that Alfred A. Knopf turned down my first collection of stories after playing games with it, or at least the game of cat’s-paw, now rolling it over and saying they were going to publish it and then rolling it on its back when the president of the company announced it wouldn’t sell … if the situation ever arose when Alfred A. Knopf was the only publishing house remaining in the world and I was the sole remaining author, that would mark the end of the world of books.