Other People's Rejection Letters: Relationship Enders, Career Killers, and 150 Other Letters You'll Be Glad You Didn't Receive Book

I requested this book thinking it would be mostly rejections for writers - this kind of rejection I have grown quite familiar with in recent years. This book, however, deals with rejections of all kinds, from job rejections, break-up letters, eviction notices, and parent/child dismissals.

Some of these rejections are for very well-known people, including an army discharge letter for Jimi Hendrix, citing a demeanor that indicates being stoned and masturbating while on duty; a NASA rejection for a future astronaut; Eleanor Roosevelt's quitting of the D.A.R.; a scathing letter from Harry S. Truman to Joseph McCarthy; and a cringe-worthy letter from F.Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter reprimanding her for her terrible behavior and expressing anger at himself for even marrying her mother.

The rejection letters from children, such as one child telling her mother she's running away and quite happy about it, or an 8-year-old boy calling his friend a "crap-ass" for popping his balloon, are hilarious. The notes between middle school kids who may or may not have had a crush on one another brought back so many memories of that time in my life.

Throughout are rejections received by one artist who turned all his rejections into a work of art.

I never knew there were so many ways to be rejected... and these are certainly letters I'm glad I didn't get! (Although there was one form rejected shown in a mass - all for one aspiring author - and I have the same exact form rejection hanging on my Wall of Rejection!). This book would appeal to anyone who enjoyed the PostScript books - while there was not the range of hope and sadness in this collection, there is a section at the end which does a "follow-up" for several of the rejections, so there was some hope!