{"id":2716,"date":"2007-09-10T09:53:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-10T17:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=2716"},"modified":"2007-09-10T09:53:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-10T17:53:00","slug":"2716","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=2716","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Sure, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/09\/books\/review\/Oshinsky-t.html?_r=2&#038;ref=review&#038;oref=slogin&#038;oref=slogin\">this <i>New York Times<\/i> article<\/a> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookslut.com\/blog\/\">Bookslut<\/a>) shows that Knopf has passed on a lot of authors over the years &#8212; Borges, Orwell, Kerouac, Sartre, Nabokov &#8212; but does it really <i>prove<\/i> anything, much less that these rejections <i>were<\/i> blunders? I mean, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and history is littered with bestselling and award-winning novels that originally nobody wanted to publish. But just as often, if not more frequently, it&#8217;s full of the opposite. And just because a book finds massive success with one publisher, that&#8217;s no guarantee it would have found the same success with another, or at another time.<\/p>\n<p>You see the same thing with movies. Did you know Doris Day reportedly turned down the role of Mrs. Robinson in <i>The Graduate<\/i>? Or that Nick Nolte turned down <i>Indiana Jones<\/i>? Heck, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.notstarring.com\/\">there&#8217;s a whole site<\/a> full of these things! But does anyone honestly believe those would have been the same movies with different stars attached? Why should books be so different?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sure, this New York Times article (via Bookslut) shows that Knopf has passed on a lot of authors over the years &#8212; Borges, Orwell, Kerouac, Sartre, Nabokov &#8212; but does it really prove anything, much less that these rejections were blunders? I mean, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and history is littered with bestselling and &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=2716\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}