“The

unique kind of hurt resulting from the rejection of ( an author’s) submitted

manuscript” is weighed by Canadian psychiatrist Vivian Rakoff. ‘Examples of writerly narcissism abound: It is the rare

author who does not flip first to his entry in the journal or newspaper,

or who does not stop to pause obsessively inside every bookstore,

anxiously searching for his book on display.

It has long been known that writers suffer from a much higher incidence

of mood disorders, including depression and mania, than other people.

The precise medical reason for this has never been adequately

explained. But Rakoff believes it is because writing is less a true

expression of the artist’s life (except in the case of the daily diarist)

than it is a “form of compensation and redress for denied satisfactions.” ‘