SOURCE: "Deep-Sixed into the Atlantic," in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 11, No. 3, Fall, 1991, pp. 260-62.

In the following excerpt, West annotates a letter he wrote to The Atlantic on July 4, 1991, after the magazine refused to publish a positive review of his novel, The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper.

When word came that the Atlantic, enthusiastic about my work, had commissioned a long review of The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper, I was impressed; middle-brow America was getting to grips at last. Some time later I heard from the reviewer, Bill Marx, editor of the Boston Phoenix's Literary Supplement, that he had indeed written the review but that Jack Beatty, senior editor at the Atlantic, had killed it: he could not print an enthusiastic review, he said, of a novel devoted to the chopping up of women. In the mean-time, other reviews had...