Every literary rejection carries in its DNA dual code which says: this is a meaningless gesture, and you are wasting your life. It is up to the poor recipient to navigated this helixed signal. This experiment conducted by David Cameron for The Review Review—submitting New Yorker short stories to other journals (including the New Yorker) and being rejected every time (including by the New Yorker)—proves both of these to be simultaneously true. As he opines with proof:
Slush sucks. It’s as simple, and as unhelpful, as that. Keep in mind that they do in fact call it the slush pile, not the “jewel in the rough pile,” or the “we can’t wait to see what serendipity brought us today!” pile, but the slush pile, named after the very same stuff that mucks your driveway up after a dank snowfall. It some cases it would be more accurate to call it the “gotta snake my drain” pile.