Not so fast: Many Nobel winners endured initial rejections

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Not so fast: Many Nobel winners endured initial rejections

2019-10-15 05:45 Last Updated At：05:50

Some of the world's most innovative ideas and creations have started out in a rejection pile.

One of this year's Nobel Prize winners for medicine previously saw his findings on how cells respond to changes in oxygen levels turned down for publication. In 1992, the journal Nature rejected Peter J. Ratcliffe's article, telling him that "we have sadly concluded, on balance, that your paper would be better placed in a more specialized journal, particularly given the competition for space." Twenty-seven years later, judges praised Ratcliffe and fellow winners William Kaelin Jr. and Gregg Semenza for discoveries that could lead to "promising new strategies to fight anaemia, cancer and many other diseases."

Ratcliffe's vindication is an old Nobel tradition, and not just for medicine. Several science winners, from Enrico Fermi to Murray Gell-Mann, had their findings initially rejected. Hans Krebs was informed by Nature in 1937 that there was no space for his paper on the citrus acid cycle, now better known as the Krebs Cycle, and the basis for his 1953 medal. Rosalyn S. Yalow, winner of a Nobel in 1977, was informed years earlier by The Journal of Clinical Investigation that her landmark findings on insulin and antibodies were "dogmatic" and "not warranted by the data."

In literature, some of the most celebrated writers were once considered too strange, too limited or just too boring. Several publishers turned down Toni Morrison's first novel, "The Bluest Eye," and she was chastised for years by white critics for focusing too much on black characters. The novelist Reynolds Price would cite her for "the understandable but weakening omission of active white characters," an opinion he later withdrew about the 1993 laureate.

Ernest Hemingway was at the center of American letters when he won the Nobel, in 1954, but at the start, he was criticized for his minimalist style and libertine characters. In turning down "The Sun Also Rises," Hemingway's landmark novel about the 1920s "lost generation," Moberley Luger of publisher Peacock & Peacock called Hemingway's work "both tedious and offensive."

"You really are a man's man, aren't you?" Luger told the author in 1925, the year before Scribner's released his book. "I wouldn't be surprised to hear that you had penned this entire story locked up at the club, ink in one hand, brandy in the other. Your bombastic, dipsomaniac, where-to-now characters had me reaching for my own glass of brandy."

Other literature winners enduring initial discouragement were Pearl Buck, Isaac Beshevis Singer and 1983 laureate William Golding, whose Dystopian classic "Lord of the Flies" was rejected numerous times. Faber & Faber editor Charles Monteith described the book as an "Absurd & uninteresting fantasy." It was "Rubbish & dull. Pointless."

That was Monteith's reaction after the first chapter. He then kept reading, suggested that he and Golding meet and worked on some revisions.

"I have just finished reading the galleys of 'Lord of the Flies' and I'm even more enthusiastic about it than I was before," he eventually told the author, whose book was released by Faber in 1954. "Though I must have read it through four or five times by now, I still simply couldn't put the proofs down until I had finished them. It's had precisely the same effect on several other people here; indeed, in two cases I have had complaints that it resulted in nightmares! What a terrific book it is."

Venice launches experiment to charge day-trippers an access fee in bid to combat over-tourism

2024-04-25 12:09 Last Updated At：13:42

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Under the gaze of the world’s media, the fragile lagoon city of Venice launches a pilot program Thursday to charge day-trippers a 5-euro (around $5.35) entry fee that authorities hope will discourage visitors from arriving on peak days and make the city more livable for its dwindling residents.

Signs advising arriving visitors of the new requirement for a test phase of 29 days through July have been erected outside the main train station and other points of arrival.

Some 200 stewards have been trained to politely walk anyone unaware of the fee through the process of downloading a QR code. A kiosk has been set up for those not equipped with a smartphone. Once past designated entry ports, officials will carry out random checks for QR codes that show the day-tripper tax has been paid or that the bearer is exempt.

Transgressors face fines 50 euros to 300 euros. The requirement applies only for people arriving between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Outside of those hours, access is free.

“We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,’’ said the city’s top tourism official, Simone Venturini. “We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days.”

Venice has long suffered under the pressure of over-tourism, but officials say that pre-pandemic estimates ranging from 25 million to 30 million visitors a year — including day-trippers — are not reliable and that the pilot project also aims to come up with more exact figures to help better manage the phenomenon.

By contrast, registered visitors spending the night last year numbered 4.6 million, according to city figures, down 16% from pre-pandemic highs.

Venturini said the city is strained when the number of day-trippers reaches 30,000 to 40,000. Its narrow alleyways are clogged with people and water taxis packed, making it difficult for residents to go about their business.

Not all residents, however, are persuaded of the efficacy of the new system in dissuading mass tourism, and say more attention needs to be paid to boosting the resident population and services they need.

Venice last year passed a telling milestone when the number of tourist beds exceeded for the first time the number of official residents, which is now below 50,000 in the historic center with its picturesque canals.

“Putting a ticket to enter a city will not decrease not even by one single unit the number of visitors that are coming,’’ said Tommaso Cacciari, an activist who organized a protest Thursday against the measure.

“You pay a ticket to take the metro, to go to a museum, an amusement park; you don’t pay a ticket to enter a city. This is the last symbolic step of a project of an idea of this municipal administration to kick residents out of Venice,” he said.

Venturini said about 6,000 people had already paid to download the QR code, and officials expect paid day-tripper arrivals Thursday to reach some 10,000.

More than 70,000 others have downloaded a QR code denoting an exemption, including to work in Venice or as a resident of the Veneto region. People staying in hotels in Venice, including in mainland districts like Marghera or Mestre, should also get a QR code attesting to their stay, which includes a hotel tax.

The tourist official says interest in Venice's pilot program has been keen from other places suffering from mass tourism, including other Italian art cities and cities abroad such as Barcelona and Amsterdam.