Rare Specimen: A New Yorker Acceptance

I love Ann Beattie stories. I taught them once in Freshman English in the 1990s. Here is an acceptance she got after 13 straight rejections over the course of 21 months*:

                                                                                     November 1973       

Dear Ann Beattie:

Oh, joy...
Yes, we are taking A PLATONIC RELATIONSHIP, and I think this is just about the best news of the year. Maybe it isn't the best news for you, but there is nothing that gives me more pleasure (well, almost nothing) than at last sending an enthusiastic yes to a writer who has persisted through as many rejections and rebuffs as you have. It's a fine story, I think — original, strong, and true.

Roger Angell
Editor,
The New Yorker

*Courtesy: The New Yorker and the World It Made by Ben Yagoda (Scribner, 2000)