Writing Life
A Few Words to Mr. Clifford Irving about the Movie, The Hoax
by Edith Lynn Hornik-Beer

Dear Mr. Irving,

The DVD, The Hoax, about your life, Mr. Irving, awakens many old memories. You see Mr. Irving, I was a young writer trying to cope with rejection slips when you were sent to prison in 1972 for lying to McGraw-Hill that Howard Hughes, the prominent and enigmatic recluse, had commissioned you to write his biography. Your actions—fake interviews, using a publisher's big advance, trips to Switzerland, Swiss numbered accounts, finally prison, and, of course, cherchez la femme—gave you great material for a book, then the movie and now the DVD.

Any writer will understand that it was the publishers' and editors' cruel rejection slips that drove you to seek fame and fortune in the manner you did. Furthermore, when your books were finally published, they did not become best sellers.

As a fellow writer, I would like to tell you in my own modest way how I have coped with rejection slips. In 1972, when you originally lied to McGraw-Hill, rejection slips came by mail and I had enough of them to paper a wall, and that is exactly what I did. It is true my husband did curse as he was pasting them on the wall, and kept expounding, "Maybe, if you quit writing and took a job like everyone else, we could afford a professional paperhanger."

Once the wall was finished it was sublime. It became the conversation piece at our cocktail parties. Who else could claim such a wall? Today, I download my e-mail rejection slips and add them to my wall. It keeps everything contemporary.

Our guests maintain that a rejection such as "Madame: Your writing style does not conform to our requirements," does not sound so bad after a drink. After two drinks, some guests feel they can even read between the lines a gentle attempt on the part of the editor to inspire me to write better.

The publishers who send standard rejection slips are poohooed at all our cocktail parties as unimaginative, spineless jellyfish.

Some guests play games like, "Did the editor really read the manuscript or did the assistant take care of the whole caboodle for the powers that be."

Another game is "Who is the most tactful equivocator?" The editor who wrote, "This book deserves to be published but it does not fit into our present marketing structure," has gotten the most accolades at our cocktail parties.

It is only fair to warn you that if you have such a wall you have to continually watch the fingers of antique collectors. My New York Herald Tribune rejection slip dated May 12, 1965 is considered a collector's item. You might be interested to know that the handwriting on those older rejection slips (before the days of e-mail) get a lot of attention. Much as we might view ancient writing in a museum, I have seen mothers point out to their children how some editors willingly used handwriting to add a comment to a typewritten note.

But to get back to you, Mr. Irving, I owe you a thank you. You have made me want to again risk rejection slips by writing this piece.

In return for all the pleasure you have given me, let me make a suggestion: Why don't you start such a wall? You don't know what your future is. The beauty of the plan is that all you need are walls and paste and those two items you'll find wherever you'll end up—in Ibiza, inside a Swiss bank vault. Should you be in confinement for any reason whatsoever, you can always spend your time aiming darts at the rejection slips. Believe me, if it weren't for my wall and my darts, I don't know to what extremes I might have been driven. Who knows … I might even have ended up in jail.

Sincerely yours,
Edith Lynn Hornik-Beer

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Edith Lynn Hornik-Beer is a freelance writer. In between rejection slips, she has been published in Elle, Neue Zuricher Zeitung, The Sunday New York Times and the Denver Post. She is also the author of five books.