Kids These Days... Bah!

Despite the respectful fading into the distance of my #1 news source, bizarre stories keep popping up. My new favorite is the Jane Austen Bozo, a struggling unpublished author in the UK who seems to be looking for a way to blame someone else for his own failure to sell the manuscript to his first novel.

The story is this: frustrated novelist sends manuscripts of Jane Austen novels out to publishers and is surprised when those novels are not accepted for publication. This is supposed to prove that kids today can't recognize quality writing when they see it.

Okay, look, this one's too easy. Look at the picture of David Lassman in the Daily Mail article. The rejection letter he's so proudly displaying is from Harlequin Mills & Boon (yes, that Harlequin), which is not only a completely inappropriate market for a Jane Austen novel, but clearly states in their submission guidelines, "Unless otherwise noted, we do not accept unsolicited complete manuscripts." Notice how short the rejection letter is.

The Daily Mail article itself is a piece of crap, as evidenced by the fact that the author thinks that Penguin and Penguin Classics are the same thing. For more reliable sources, I'll send you to Jim MacDonald and John Scalzi. They've said all that needs to be said in depth about why Lassman's stunt signifies absolutely nothing.