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A selection of rejection
letters
from The Campbell Report
by Neil Brennen
(posted 14 June 2003)
It has been said
that the birth of the Internet is the death of the rejection
notice, because now anything can and will be published, regardless
of quality. (Actually, we just made that up, but someone should
have said it.) To show that The Campbell Report has some
standards, and doesn't post just anything (although we do host
the Chess Club Potato
Turda website), here are a few of the rejection letters
and e-mails to submissions and requests that The Campbell
Report sends out in an average week. The letters were copied
from the "out" bin of the Executive Secretary to J. Franklin
Campbell, Ms. Helen Blazes, while she was at lunch last Tuesday.
Dear Mr. Parr,
Thank you for your
recent submission, Beyond the Toilet Police: The Threat of
Drug Testing in Correspondence Chess. While it is a considerable
piece of work, and must have taken you hours to cut and paste
all those newsgroup postings, it probably is not an article
our readers would find interesting. We haven't heard of anyone
suggesting ICCF will start testing for drugs in the World Championship
Finals. May we suggest you approach Chess
Cafe about this article? They have a Bulletin Board on which
you could post it.
As for your other
suggestions, we are at a loss as to who to pass them on to,
as we have no one at The Campbell Report named "The Historian".
Sincerely,
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. Hotpornpix@correspondencechess.com
Please remove us
from your mailing list.
Sincerely,
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. Winter,
Thank you for your
list of spelling errors in our published articles. We are glad
to know The Campbell Report provides you with enjoyment.
Cordially,
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. Winckelman,
We appreciate very
much your sending us a line from a lyric by Manfred Mann. However,
we don't understand how this relates to chess, and thus are
unable to publish it.
Your suggestion of
a "kindergarten" chess article is under consideration, but we
wonder why the Sveshnikov Sicilian is such a large part of it.
Sincerely,
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. "French
Defender",
The Campbell Report
has a policy of rejecting unsigned letters or letters written
under a pseudonym. While your series of love sonnets addressed
to a chessplayer and TCCMB
poster named "Jenny" was not without interest, we do not feel
it is an item that would appeal to our readership.
Sincerely,
The Campbell Report
Dear John,
We are grateful for
all your contributions to The Campbell Report over the
years. However, Mr. Campbell feels that your 219 page essay
Isador Flaccus: Philadelphia's Podiatrist of Correspondence
Chess, was a bit too much of a good thing. Accordingly,
we are not going to publish it.
May I suggest you
submit the article to Correspondence
Chess News? They also publish articles on dead Philadelphia
chessplayers.
All the best,
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. Long,
We thank you for
asking about reprint rights for material published at The
Campbell Report for use in your new magazine. I brought
the matter to Mr. Campbell's attention, and Mr. Campbell asked
if the reprint rights were for new articles or ones you had
already published without permission.
Sincerely,
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. Curtin,
We looked over your
analysis of the opening 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6, and we
don't see the "new defensive strategies" for Black that you
claim. Perhaps you should reexamine your analysis.
Accordingly, we are
unable to publish this article. Have you sent it to Chess
Life?
Sincerely,
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. Diamond,
Thank you for the
letter from your agent and publicist, and the text of the interview
conducted with you by your publicist. While we appreciate being
on your mailing list for press releases, we don't think the
interview you provided to us is appropriate for The Campbell
Report, and so we will not be using it. Have you submitted
it to Chess Life?
Likewise, while there
may be a portion of The Campbell Report's readership
that may be interested in the news that your performance as
Screech in Saved by the Bell's first season is now available
on DVD, we doubt it warrants a full length article.
Sincerely,
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. Hotpornpix@correspondencechess.com
We ask you again,
please remove us from your mailing list.
Sincerely,
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. Bomwamti,
Unfortunately, we
do not have the funds to advance to you to take advantage of
this unusual business opportunity, although the promised three
thousand percent return on our investment is very attractive.
We hope the unfortunate turmoil in Nigeria that you explained
in your letter works out for the best for you.
Cordially,
The Campbell Report
Dear Ms. ________________,
We hate to be the
bearer of bad news, but J. Franklin Campbell is already married.
We hope you will continue to enjoy The Campbell Report
in spite of this circumstance.
At the express request
of Mrs. Campbell, we no longer forward marriage proposals to
Mr. Campbell. We will, however, send it to Neil Brennen, for
his consideration, should you wish to marry a chess writer.
Sincerely,
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. Dixon,
We do not provide
analysis of ongoing correspondence games as a reader service.
If you feel the need to have this done, we suggest purchasing
either a chess engine of some kind or a FIDE titled player.
The price on both has been coming down lately, and there are
a lot more of them than there used to be.
Good luck,
The Campbell Report
Mr. Hotpornpix@correspondencechess.com
Remove us from your
mailing list or we will contact your Internet Service Provider.
The Campbell Report
Dear Mr. Sloan,
Allow us to express
our sympathy for the capture of your former wife by Laotian
pirates, and the subsequent distress it has caused you. However,
since the lengthy article you submitted has nothing to do with
chess, let alone correspondence chess, we feel it would not
be of interest to our readers. We suggest you may wish to obtain
a website, and post your article there. You may wish to consider
the use of contractions in your future writing to save on bandwidth.
In answer to your
other questions, The Campbell Report has no plans to
add MIDI files to our articles, and we do not know of any single
women in Singapore we could "fix you up with". Should you wish
to meet some women, we think one of our unwelcome correspondents,
Hotpornpix@correspondencechess.com,
might be of some interest to you. Our providing this e-mail,
of course, does not constitute a recommendation of this service.
We wish you best
of luck in your new career in the transportation field. We will
certainly hail you if we visit New York City.
Sincerely,
The Campbell Report
© 2003 Neil Brennen, All Rights Reserved.
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