Laila Lalami

I never thought that the biggest win in my life would come from being a Class A loser. But that’s the way it went down. Let me explain.

I’m the wordsmith who penned The Resilient Writer: Tales of Rejection and Triumph from 23 Top Authors, a book about how we scriveners can deal with the thumbs-down, but my pipe dream was to become a published novelist. When all else failed, I decided to latch onto rejection instead, which is what finally led me to a real live book.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d been published before, in some magazines you’ve heard of and plenty you haven’t, and I’d been making a living as a corporate hack for a good chunk of time before I even dared to attempt writing a novel. And I got plenty of rejections along the way. But believe you me, nothing is as personal, painful and ego-shattering as the rejection of a first novel. Or at least, if there is, I haven’t found it yet.

You may be wondering if my novel was any good, or if maybe it deserved to be rejected? All I know I worked darn hard on it for five backbreaking years, and that I was pleased as punch when I wrote “The End.” Hell, anyone who even finishes a novel, no matter how bad it is, deserves some pride! And mine was good enough to land me a top New York agent. We just never found the proverbial happy home for it.

A lot of the people I interviewed for The Resilient Writer have plenty of rejected novels hidden away in their drawers or closets. Maybe my first novel deserves to be deep-sixed, too. I can’t be the judge of that. All I know is, when my then-agent gave up on it for good, after sending it out for two-and-a-half years, I had a bad case of the blues. It wasn’t a pretty picture. I even pulled the plug on my second novel, that’s how broken up I was.

Then I had the bright idea of taking my tormented emotions and putting them to good use. First I whipped up a website, www.rejectioncollection.com, for other crazed rejects like me to beef about the unfairness of it all. Then I came up with a book proposal for a book about rejection, which was rejected, and a second one, likewise. But by the third or fourth rewrite I finally had a winner.

So here I am today. I’m not known as a sensitive novelist, but as a hard-boiled rejexpert. But I guess this is one twist of fate I’ll just have to learn to live with.

“Emil Habibi’s The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist is classic satire and may also be one of the first examples of peculiarly Israeli Arab literature,” Jonathan says. “The Arab Israelis are ethnically Palestinian, but their experiences have been shaped by life in an Israeli society to which they simultaneously do and do not belong, and this has given rise to a distinct literary voice. Habibi - who was a communist member of the Israeli Knesset - experienced these contradictions in full, and the exploits of his absurd anti-hero illustrate how surreal they must have seemed to those living through them.

The term “pessoptimist” - the author’s coinage for a pessimistic optimist - is a good one to know for those who follow Middle Eastern politics, because the news from that region is often both hopeful and depressing. The continuing validity of Habibi’s satire a generation after it was written inspires the same mix of emotions.”

Jonathan Edelstein is a lawyer practicing in New York City and the author of The Head Heeb, which analyzes Middle East affairs and democratization in the developing world.

If you’d like to recommend an underappreciated book for this series, please send mail to llalami at yahoo dot com.

Over at Salon, Daniel Alarcon analyzes some of the reactions he’s been getting recently while on tour promoting his collection, War By Candlelight.

Last April I was invited to a literary fundraiser of sorts. It was a fancy affair, full of very wealthy people and well-dressed waiters carrying trays of wine and strange-looking appetizers. A couple of dozen writers had been invited, and we were plied with alcohol and dispersed into the party. I fell into a few pleasant conversations with some very kind people, all of them genuinely excited for me — You’re so young to have published a book! etc. — and then was seated at dinner next to a woman in her 60s, who spent her meal asking me about the exotic origins of my last name. I’m Peruvian, I told her. But that last name, it reminds me of a bug that bit me when I was living in Mexico! Oh, I said. Where does it come from? she asked. I explained to her at one point that most words in Spanish that begin in “Al” are Arabic in origin, that the Moorish influence transformed the language, so that my last name may have been Arcon or Arco. I’m not sure why I told her this. I’m neither Spanish nor Moorish, and certainly not a linguist, but I felt she needed something to keep her occupied for a bit.

She gave me this wide-eyed look: That is so topical, she said. Like al-Qaida.

Even in the dim light, I’m sure she sensed she had stunned me: not that I’m saying you’re one of those people.

Oh, no, I stammered. Because I’m not.

She patted me on the shoulder. I understand, she said in a conspiratorial whisper; my daughter married a Mexican.

It goes downhill from there, with Alarcon getting increasingly frustrated that he doesn’t fit the image that is expected of the Latino writer, which is to say that of the struggling immigrant who writes novels or stories that are merely thinly disguised versions of his autobiography, how it’s all heartbreaking and so, so real.

Oh and the answer to that question? Clearly, one who can write.