1. THEY RECOGNIZE THE SUPERIOR QUALITY of my work by admitting that they “regret that (they) are unable to carry it in the magazine.” You can’t regret doing something that’s not regretworthy, right? Right?
2. They spelled my name right. BOTH names. I could plotz from that alone.
3. It gives me a chance to plug the original (as well as its backstory: Drifting into a reverie one afternoon, a series of images — colored panels in the style of Nicole Claveloux or George Herriman — began flipping before my eyes. I could barely write them down fast enough. That usually doesn’t happen to me; I usually compose either at the keyboard or while pacing the room. The version I sent to TNY omitted the dialog, which is inconsequential anyway; I didn’t know what else to do with it, so I sent it off. As William S Burroughs so famously quoth in Naked Lunch, “Wouldn’t you?”).
What’s freaky (and probably dates me because I find it freaky) is that someone Googled “new yorker rejection slip” this morning (according to my log), and found mine as the third site thus referenced. “This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere.”