This is more for me—to keep me motivated—than anything else. It also amuses me.
My dad asked to read my Nine Days manuscript (which I’m targeting to agents this summer) and sent the following note:
After having recently reread The Great Gatsby because I saw a copy at one of those free library stands in front of someone’s house, and I read it so long ago that I thought I might as well try it again, my opinion is the following: Fitzgerald’s book is about the same length as yours, and yours is much better. His is extremely dated and very contrived, with characters that have very little life to them, and yours teems with vitality and is psychologically much more interesting. I also read To Kill a Mockingbird, a real chore to get through. It was worse than Gatsby. So There you have my evaluation of your piece vis a vis what has been termed Classic American Literature.
Better than Harper Lee!
Just to summarize, noted {classical music} critic {my dad, retired} thinks my book is better than The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird, combined (probably)! How can this possibly go wrong???
