Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Rejection Letter He Received For His Dresden Account.

Failed authors! We are Legion. Here’s something to cheer us up: even Kurt Vonnegut took a lickin’ before he blew up. Here’s the rejection letter a young ass Vonnegut received for an account he wrote of the Dresden Bombing.

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On August 29, 1949,  The Atlantic Monthly  sent this rejection letter to a 27-year-old Kurt Vonnegut, who had submitted his account of surviving the Allied bombing of Dresden (plus two other articles) to the magazine.

And as you may know, Vonnegut’s time as a POW in Dresden would later inform his time-jumping novel  Slaughterhouse-Five, which would hit the scene  two decades later. Here’s the transcript of the rejection letter:

Dear Mr. Vonnegut:

We have been carrying out our usual summer house-cleaning of the manuscripts on our anxious bench and in the file, and among them I find the three papers which you have shown me as samples of your work. I am sincerely sorry that no one of them seems to us well adapted to for our purpose. Both the account of the bombing of Dresden and your article, “What’s a Fair Price for Golden Eggs?” have drawn commendation although neither one is quite compelling enough for final acceptance.

Our staff continues fully manned so I cannot hold out the hope of an editorial assignment, but I shall be glad to know that you have found a promising opening elsewhere.

Faithfully yours,

(Signed, ‘Edward Weeks’)

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