The best rejections always come by email. Imagine my surprise when I got this email thanking me for sharing my fine 'wok' with these people. Only moments before, I had been completely unaware that I owned a wok, let alone a fine one (what are the qualities of a fine wok, I wonder…). Thankfully, they moved on and started talking about a piece I had totally forgotten that I had submitted seven months earlier.

I was also a bit stumped by the second line: 'We receive a large number of submissions but can publish only one in a hundred.' This sounds odd. Is there some sort of cryptic rule? Is it in their mandate? 'At the North American Review our goal is not to publish the finest literature of our time, nor the most unusual. No, at the North American Review ours is the honourable goal of publishing every hundredth piece of literature we come across.' I imagine some guy's job there is sitting at a desk pulling a chain connected to one of those number-flip boards: 97…98…99… CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!! We got one!!!!! 101…102…103…

If I wasn't confused enough at this point, what with the woks and the bizarre publishing guidelines, NAR was going to ensure it by telling me that they no longer accept email submissions. So…was I rejected because they didn't like my piece? Or because I didn't hit the magic number? Or because I submitted it by email? But I submitted it by email seven months ago, when it was still ok to submit by email…so was I retroactively rejected? Then the NAR stops up the mental haemorrhaging of this paragraph with a holey cork of a sentence which I would like to respond to by paraphrasing a line from my Asimov's Science Fiction rejection slip:

Another common cause (all too common, we're afraid) of rejection is the obvious lack of basic English compositional skills on the part of the author… Stories are rejected on this basis because a writer must be familiar with the tools of his or her trade, just as an electrician or carpenter must.

Finally, unsure of anything, really, anymore, I'm told this process (of what, I'm not sure) could have all been quicker if I'd just used regular mail. One thing I'll say for this rejection, though, is that at least they were polite.

My Rebuttal: I don't know what's sadder, sending out an automated, impersonal rejection letter, or using a REAL person to fake an automated, impersonal rejection letter [and then screwing it up real bad.] I mean, here's a chance to actually make a real comment or criticism about a submission…and instead they decide to play dyslexic robot. Or maybe this hideously spelled, non sequitur actually IS an automated message. This possibility is perhaps the most pitiful to bear. Anyway, in conclusion, I would just like to say: It is the pleasure, Review American North, of the thanking for your reads and, in beforetimes, I keep the particulars of wok submissions in my brain.