"My first book was rejected nine times. It turned out to be a best seller, Battle Cry? in 1953"
About this Quote
Rejection here isn’t a sob story; it’s a credential. Leon Uris compresses a whole mythology of American publishing into two blunt sentences: the gatekeepers said no, the market said yes. The nine rejections do more than signal perseverance. They imply a mismatch between institutional taste and popular appetite, a quiet accusation that the industry’s filters often screen for familiarity, not impact. By the time he drops the punchline - “It turned out to be a best seller” - the number has already done its work, turning success into vindication.
The timing matters. Battle Cry lands in 1953, when World War II is close enough to be felt in the body, but far enough to be processed into narrative. Uris was writing for a readership hungry for big, legible stories about duty, masculinity, and national purpose. Publishers, still sniffing for prestige and wary of “commercial” war fiction, could plausibly have seen it as too blunt, too loud, too accessible. That’s precisely what made it travel.
There’s also a shrewd authorial self-fashioning at play. Uris frames his origin story as a brawl with the system, positioning himself as a working writer who earned his audience without elite permission. The question mark after Battle Cry reads like a wink at memory or a rhetorical shrug: the exact title doesn’t matter as much as the arc. What he’s really selling is the idea that persistence isn’t just noble; it’s profitable, and sometimes the crowd is the sharper editor.
The timing matters. Battle Cry lands in 1953, when World War II is close enough to be felt in the body, but far enough to be processed into narrative. Uris was writing for a readership hungry for big, legible stories about duty, masculinity, and national purpose. Publishers, still sniffing for prestige and wary of “commercial” war fiction, could plausibly have seen it as too blunt, too loud, too accessible. That’s precisely what made it travel.
There’s also a shrewd authorial self-fashioning at play. Uris frames his origin story as a brawl with the system, positioning himself as a working writer who earned his audience without elite permission. The question mark after Battle Cry reads like a wink at memory or a rhetorical shrug: the exact title doesn’t matter as much as the arc. What he’s really selling is the idea that persistence isn’t just noble; it’s profitable, and sometimes the crowd is the sharper editor.
Quote Details
| Topic | Perseverance |
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