The Rage of a Rejected Writer

Mediabistro writes, “N.P. Thompson, a Seattle-based film critic who earned the nickname ‘notorious’ for his predisposition to pan everything, expressed his frustration with Slate's reviews section in the post-David Edelstein era — and, specifically, being rejected for publication in Slate — in an e-mail to editors Jacob Weisberg, Bryan Curtis and Meghan O'Rourke last night.”

Thompson wrote (in part), “Meghan O'Rourke gives the impression that living in a Manhattan or Brooklyn neighborhood (preferably Brooklyn, and the more gentrified, the better) is pretty much the lone criterion of worth, and that if one lives outside the bubble, then she isn't going to read what a writer submits, nor will she even consider looking at a writer's clips, and beyond that, neither she nor Bryan Curtis will have the slightest interest in making a new discovery. What we have at Slate are editors hell-bent on preserving the shittiest, shallowest aspects of the status quo by slamming a door on anyone capable of upstaging their friends and neighbors, or their lovers.”

“And after Meghan has dodged reading your piece, sent you an absent-minded rejection letter that gives her entire show away, she will, in a week's time or so, have her assistant Blake Wilson send a second rejection letter in which he announces that the piece you've submitted ‘isn't write for Slate.’ That's w-r-i-t-e when he means r-i-g-h-t.”