John Irving’s 1978 novel The World According to Garp contains the complete text of a novella, “The Pension Grillparzer.” Garp, an aspiring writer, submits it to a magazine and receives a summary rejection: “The story is only mildly interesting, and it does nothing new with language or with form. Thanks for showing it to us, though.”

When Irving’s editor asked whether this might seem too abrupt, Irving showed him a rejection slip from the Paris Review — he had submitted “The Pension Grillparzer” to them just to see what would happen and, receiving this response, inserted it verbatim into the novel. “I tried the story with American Review, too, they turned it down. And even two non-literary magazines didn’t want it: The New Yorker and Esquire.”

“It was a good feeling when ‘The Pension Grillparzer’ was repeatedly singled out as one of the strongest parts of the novel, and it won the Pushcart Prize for short fiction that year. One literary magazine, Antaeus, did publish it. Naturally, I’ve liked them ever since.”