Even with a David Foster Wallace blurb.

No Joke.

“[That's Not A Feeling took] five or six years from starting it to getting it to a point when I could start sending it out. But it was such a long time that I was trying to sell it — four years — during that time I was also doing some revisions and changes. Occasionally some significant ones. So I don’t know quite how to count it, but basically the focused stuff was five or six years.”

And then Mark Doten, our literary fiction editor, pulled him out of the slush pile.

Read more of Dan’s publication story at The Atlantic.

Check out the New York Times Book Review‘s wonderful take.