Stockett’s bestseller The Help rejected 60 times
JAMIE PORTMAN BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — You couldn’t blame Kathryn Stockett for feeling down and depressed a few years ago. After all, the literary world seemed united in slamming the door in her face, as she struggled to find a publisher for a novel she had written called The Help.
Which is why — even now, as the royalty cheques from her phenomenal 2009 bestseller continue to mount — she won’t easily forget the scratched note she once received from one hostile literary agent: “We don’t want to do this. Please don’t send me your work any more.”
The bluntness of that message might have shrivelled the dreams of a less determined writer than the Mississippi-born Stockett, who had delved into her own background to lay bare a neglected aspect of the racist attitudes that pervaded the American South of half a century ago.
But Stockett persevered, even as rejection slips piled up. Many turndowns gave no reason — the manuscript was simply returned. But one agent did take the trouble to write a proper letter. It was still dismissive: “I don’t think this would be salable in the United States. No one would ever buy this book.”
Stockett can only smile when she recalls that particular predic- tion, given what’s happened in her life. A few days ago, The Help showed up as No. 6 on U.S.A. Today’s bestseller list, marking the 140th straight week it made it onto that newspaper’s charts. And now, there’s further vindication in that Oscar nomination for best picture, one of four nods given to the film version, which enjoyed a triumphant theatrical run last autumn and is now a hot seller on DVD.
“I took five years to write it,” Stockett says now. “And then I started sending it to agents and I received 60 rejections. Finally, No. 61 took it and sold it in about three weeks to Penguin.”
Stockett had a childhood friend, actor and filmmaker Tate Taylor, who thought differently, and he ended up adapting and directing The Help for the screen.
He recognized that the novel did have something new to say in revealing the unknown story of the black women who worked as maids, housekeepers and nannies in the white households of a fiercely segregationist Mississippi town.
“Oh my gosh,” Taylor told his friend, “we have the last remaining facet of the story that hasn’t been told.”
In fact, Taylor believed so strongly in Stockett’s manuscript that he grabbed the film rights even before the book had found a publisher. “I called Kathryn and said, ‘This is fantastic. You cannot give up … and I’ll make it into a movie.’”