Pushcart's Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections: A History of Insult, A Solace to Writers

Three highly acclaimed volumes are gathered together for the first time with many new nasty reviews and ridiculous rejections of great authors and classic books.

A few years ago, Pushcart Press issued a series of three books: Rotten Reviews and Rotten Reviews II, edited by Bill Henderson, and Rotten Rejections, edited by André Bernard. All three volumes were hugely popular and Rotten Reviews spent some time on a national bestseller list. Now these hundreds of scathing comments are collected in one edition that will delight readers and offer solace to writers who have endured similar reviews and rejections. For example: Jane Austen was reviewed as a "husband-hunting butterfly." John Barth's early fiction was called "a real recoil." Alice in Wonderland was greeted with "a stiff overwrought story." Reviews of Moby-Dick cited Melville for "tragic-comic bubble and squeak." Classic rejection slips were delivered to John Le Carré's The Spy That Came In from the Cold: "You're welcome to Le Carré he hasn't got any future," and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: "I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years," plus many more. "A welcome bit of fun."―Philadelphia Inquirer Illustrated

André Bernard is the trade publisher of Harcourt, a regular columnist for The American Scholar, and the author of Now All We Need Is a Title.

Bill Henderson is the founder and editor of the Pushcart Prize. He received the 2006 National Book Critic Circle’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Poets & Writers / Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. He is also the author of several memoirs, including All My Dogs: A Life. The founder of the Lead Pencil Club, Henderson lives on Long Island and In Maine where he runs the Pushcart bookstore – “the world’s smallest bookstore.”