Things should be made much harder on you, or much easier (you should be happier), before you give up. Conditions, bills due. Before you realize for yourself, what I’m saying.
    Also, we suggest switching Chapter One with Chapter Two.
    “I’m of the opinion,” he said, “that the more dialogue the better off we are the less there is.”
    We think that girl you met in that bar in Williamsburg last weekend has herpes. And no she does not look like starry Dina. We’re not sure if you have it yet, the herp. Priestly’s uncle should not receive his own diagnosis until at least Chapter Five. Or Six (and is it colon cancer, or liver, make up your mind!). After Dina’s rejection of his proposal. After her move “to parts east,” again your words. What cliché! Auditions. Then, rejections of her own. What clichés! You should quit smoking, Aaron. You drink too much, too.
    Must Priestly always be “eveready for sex” (I count this phrase at least three times)?
    Must you never eat breakfast?
    Fix your ellipses.
    “Your dialogue needs quotation marks,” he said.
    Don’t be so indulgent. Experiment on your own time. Call your grandmother (who’s still living in Florida? why’d you save that for so long? Too late. Better to forget her, write her out of the book).
    Chapter Seven’s the most moving. My assistant didn’t get that far, though. Deborah didn’t get past your second eviction — but she’s younger than you even, still making your mistakes for herself.
    We’re sorry your mother’s dead, especially, yes yes. But that is no excuse. And your father and, with Chapter Eight, your uncle. But you should get back on that medication. Take risks. Allow us to suggest that you up your previous dosage.
    We suggest that you move out of that terrible new apartment in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant. You’re paying too much money. That’s a bad neighborhood: “slummy, darkly empty.” Your descriptions are either too long, or too short, and your syntax is often structurally unsound. Study grammar.
    One word, “vegetables.” One with every meal.
    Respect the reader. But first, respect yourself. We suggest you move back home to Maine. Move back to your Grandma’s other daughter’s, your aunt’s. Or Maryland, was it? Something in the M’s. Massachusetts. Michigan. Minnesota. Mississippi. Missouri. Montana? Minnesota. Minnesota.
    Change the beginning. Change the end.
    Ultimately, I wasn’t grabbed. Wasn’t overwhelmed.
    Go back to the gas station from freshman and sophomore years. Go back to that movie theater from the summer later: “trashed, stained carpets, obnoxiously high-ceilinged.”
    Go back to hanging out with your high school friends again (funny stuff, good). Go back to school, even to community college. Work nights in a factory, or early morning farming. Revise revise revise. Give up being a novelist, an aspiring novelist. You will never be a writer. You will never be published, Sincerely.