Know Your Audience

My short story, 'I Was Caesar's Barber,' has been rejected and returned by the first magazine to whom I've sent it. Mind you, this is not very surprising since the magazine in question mostly publishes opressively personal accounts of dysfunctional relationships written by anorexic women with substance abuse problems. My story is about a superstitiously skittish Roman hairdresser who must inform Julius Caesar that the proud, autocratic general is losing his hair. It's sort of ersatz Punch circa 1957, but I don't see much worng with that.
In my cover letter to the editrix I observed that, although not exclusively comic, my amusing story would undoubedly introduce a welcome touch of Apuleiusian levity into what was otherwise home to an excruciatingly over-earnest pack of Woolfs. Apparently she thought not. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so specific?
I'm not too disappointed, however. Obviously I had been harboring vague apprehensions that such a po-faced publication was not an ideal forum for my whimsical writings long before the rejection notice arrived. Perhaps I should turn the barber into a Jew and dispatch the rewrite to Heeb?

Comments

[Peter Horne]

I remember dispatching my translation of 'Caesar's Garlic Wars' by the great man's head chef Gaius Lucius Gnocco, to 'Seventeen Magazine,'without success. The editress seemed to think an article entitled 'How to Tell You're a Natural Blonde' would be more in keeping.

[stephenesque]

Yes,Seventeen has absolutely no interest in classical studies at all, and neither does Barbie Collector Monthly. Amazing!

[The Crack Young Staff]

"Heeb" probably won't want the revised piece unless you turn the barber into a transgender Jewish tattoo artist with reflexive distaste for Israel. If you can wing that, we think you're golden.