‘The everlasting NO’

This site was established in May 2025, using a well-known platform that became unstable and had to be abandoned. What follows is an edited version

of a post originally published 16 June 2025.

I’ve been revisiting some of the letters of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo. He wrote frequently of unrewarding work, and the struggle of achieving what he wanted to achieve, but without recognition. Then we find him referring to the negative reaction of the art dealer Tersteeg, which he describes as ‘the everlasting NO’ (letter 358, July 1883).

I think I understand how he felt - the dejection of rejection. But in a period of long silence from editors, sprinkled with occasional rejections, I find it helps to keep these examples in mind, all scarcely credible:

- the ms of Beckett’s Molloy “had passed through dozens of publishers’ hands” (Knowlson, 1996, p377) before it was accepted by Les Editions Minuit, who have retained it in print ever since;

- Paul Auster’s City of glass was rejected by seventeen publishers;

- and it took Eimir McBride nine years to get a publisher for A girl is a half-formed thing.

I'm sure there are numerous similar examples, and comparable experience in other arts – I think of Fanny Mendelssohn for instance.

Preparing submissions thoroughly can be time-consuming and energy-sapping; and rejections arise for a variety of reasons. But what matters to me is to re-focus on making art that is as good as I can make it. If I can’t match the talent of Beckett, Auster or McBride, I can at least try to show comparable resilience, and leave others to decide on what is beyond my control.