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Common Human Decency Every year, Houghton Mifflin publishes The Best American Short Stories, an anthology of twenty stories culled from thousands that were published in magazines in the United States and Canada the previous year. The series editor also chooses an additional hundred short stories of distinction, and lists them by title and author in the back of the book. One year, my friend Catherine discovered that a short story of hers was listed among the honored one hundred in the back pages. She learned this happy news when she was skimming through the anthology in a bookstore, debating whether she could afford to shell out the $. to buy her own copy. Suddenly, amid the usual autonyms—Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, John Updike—she spied her own name and story title bouncing off the page like a bright dot from one of those inadvisable laser pointers. This came as quite a surprise. Until then, Catherine hadn’t even been aware that her story, originally published in a small literary journal, was in the running for this lofty collection. Given the circumstances, she decided to spring for the book. I still find it hard to believe that this—this happenstance—is how my friend learned that a story of hers had been chosen as one of America’s most distinguished for that year. Every time I think about it, I just can’t get past the “what if’s.” What if Catherine hadn’t bothered to browse through the back of the book? What if she had never learned about this honor? What if she had spent her whole life assuming that her name and the name of Alice Munro had never graced the same list of distinguished authors, and this assumption had eventually led her to stop writing and degenerate into someone sad and pathetic, say an HGTV addict, reeking of handcrafted pomander balls, surrounded by wicker trash baskets converted into kitschy side tables, and surviving on stale-but-still-edible picture frames?This didn’t happen to my friend Catherine, but I’m sure it has happened to some writer, somewhere, who didn’t know her work was appreciated. Which begs the question, Why didn’t the editor at Houghton Mifflin simply pick up the telephone to tell Catherine the good news? Even a perky, short note would have sufficed. “Dear Writer, Congratulations! We loved your story and selected it as one of this year’s most distinguished. XOXO, the Editor.” Such a simple gesture, but think of the difference it could make to a writer. So why-oh-why didn’t the editor take the time to do this? I can tell you why, though if you have had any experience querying editors or sending submissions out to magazines or publishing houses, you probably know the answer. Editors have no common human decency. This is not a statement on their character. (Having once been an editor of a regional magazine, I can attest to the fact that at least some editors are actually quite nice in real life.) No, a lack of common human decency is simply a requirement of the job, as delineated in The Professional Editor’s Handbook, Rule No. ,: “Editors must refrain from exhibiting any form of compassion, enthusiasm, interest, or basic manners toward writers at large.” The reason for this rule is perfectly obvious. Editors who exhibit even the slightest sign of common human decency run the risk of desperate, aspiring authors (of which there are legions) inundating them with phone calls and e-mails about their latest scintillating story ideas, their passion for the written word, and their unpaid cable bills, all under the misguided notion that one innocent, supportive gesture constituted an “in.” No busy editor— routinely beleaguered by time, budget, and page constraints—can afford to take this risk. Hence Rule No. ,. And hence the necessity for the biggest indecency of them all: the form rejection letter (“Doesn’t meet our needs”), used even for cases where the story may be good, but the fit isn’t. Here, gentle reader, I am going to presume that you are not a professional editor at a magazine or publishing house. As such, you are not required to curb your enthusiasm around writers at large, and your behavior should conform to an entirely different set of rules, with Rule No.  being, “If you like a writer’s story, tell her!” Otherwise, your silence becomes a form of...

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