Recently in another post I mentioned that, in the late 1970s, after ten years in the accident/personal injury investigation business and now attending Toronto’s York university, I was studying literature, hoping to get into grad school and one day earn a living in the world of books.
That was a dream of mine for a long time. Finally I had to give it up and return permanently to investigation work, but, on my own, I never stopped writing about books.
One essay I wrote in university was largely responsible for that dream.
Professor Ruth Grogan was in charge of the class. Known as a tough marker, avoided by many students who weren’t confident in their writing skills, she wrote on the last page of it , “Admirable in every respect…..I can’t remember when I last gave an A + to an undergrad.”
I once read that if someone works hard at becoming a writer, on average it takes seven years to get published by the traditional publishing industry. Because I started submitting SF stories to magazines in 1970, and continued that until maybe 1995, then, in 2005, I spent a year trying to get agents interested in my novel The Birdcatcher, and, finally, that this past winter I tried hard to get agents interested in my coming book Autism Dreaming, I think I can say that I’ve been fruitlessly trying to get traditionally published for 46 years.
You might think that, like Van Gogh who was unable to sell his hundreds of paintings, which only began sell after he shot himself, I might shoot myself too. But there is no chance of that.
Rejection to me was always “water off a duck’s back.” Some of that’s just due to my character – stubborness is common in my family. But a lot of it is due to the five professors who praised my writing long ago, Ruth Grogan leading the way.
They gave me a confidence that has never left me.
The pleasure of writing about literature has never left me either. There are a number of essays on this website already, under this category of Rescuing Fiction. They have played a significant part in the increased interest this website is receiving this year. But there are many written in the distant past that belong here too. Today I’m starting to add them with the essay I wrote for Ruth Grogan, on Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
I’ve improved it a bit, but it still says exactly what it did then, drawing attention to the part of the book most people think is a sideshow, that I think is central to the novel that many critics think was his best
Here it is, as a free PDF. If you’re one of the many readers who like Hemingway, you should read it:
Alan Conrad 